President Obama wants everyone to believe that American health care is in a crisis, and he wants everyone to be willing to sacrifice in order to solve that crisis.

He wants senior citizens to pay more for Medicare but get fewer benefits. He wants them to ignore the rationing embedded in his proposals to cut hundreds of billions from the Medicare budget and to drastically increase the cost of Medicare Advantage.

President Obama wants seniors to sacrifice.

President Obama wants employers to pay more in health care premiums, and if they don't provide health insurance for their employees, he wants them to pay penalty taxes. He doesn't care that tens of thousands of small businesses are struggling to stay open and keep their employees employed. And he doesn't care that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts will hit these businesses hard.

President Obama wants employers to sacrifice.

President Obama wants doctors and hospitals to sacrifice. He is demanding cuts in reimbursement rates to hundreds of thousands of doctors and deep cuts for hospitals as well. He doesn't care that doctors' incomes have been pressured by falling reimbursement rates for years, and that many hospitals are struggling with the emergency room costs of treating the uninsured.

President Obama wants doctors and hospitals to sacrifice.

President Obama wants Big Pharma and insurance companies to sacrifice. President Obama wants young healthy people who choose not to buy health insurance to sacrifice.

President Obama wants everyone to sacrifice. Well, not quite everyone.

There is one group that President Obama doesn't mention, one group he doesn't demand sacrifice for the greater good.

President Obama is protecting the plaintiffs' lawyers who sue doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies and reap billions in fees from the tort lottery.

Though the broken, out-of-control tort system drives the cost of medicine through the roof, President Obama hasn't demanded any changes to that system, like a cap on pain and suffering damages, or a cap on lawyers' fees, or an excise tax on plaintiffs' contingency awards. Continued...