Dennis Kucinich Appears to Have Lost His Mind
Yes, this is a silly suit for a politician to bring...
Dennis: First, it is plausible to say that restaurants have a duty to serve sandwiches without dangerous hard things in them. It is not reasonable to put the burden on the consumer because that would require that the consumer have a duty to take the sandwich apart to examine its safety. That makes a mess and destroys the sandwich. The least cost avoider here may well be the maker of sandwich, who can look over the material as they put it together, or even do it en mass before doling it out in servings.
Dennis: Second, since we lack a decent health system, the tort system is in effect how we socialize certain medical costs. It undoubtedly is a hideously inefficient way of spreading losses, but it's how we do it. In that context, this suit is much less unreasonable than you suggest.
Professor DeLong: Biting an olive pit rarely leads to breaking a tooth. Breaking a tooth rarely leads to a fortune in dental bills...
Dennis Kucinich: When I bit into the olive pit, the tooth split in half, vertically through the crown and the tooth, below the level of the bone.... Although the pain was excruciating, I shook it off and I went right back to work. This tooth anchored my upper bridgework. The injured tooth and the bone above it became infected. I took a course of antibiotics for the infection, had an adverse reaction which caused an intestinal obstruction and emergency medical intervention... A specialist informed me that the damaged tooth had to be removed. A third dentist removed the tooth and I was fitted for a temporary partial. An implant was placed, but it failed... a second implant succeeded. My bridgework had to be completely reconfigured, so this injury did not affect only one tooth, but rather involved six (6) replacement teeth as well. A new crown with a new precision attachment was engineered and put in place. To clarify, I had no dental insurance that covered the injury, which, until it was resolved, affected my ability to chew food properly...
Professor DeLong: Seems to me that the least-cost risk avoider here is Dennis Kucinich: when you suffer excruciating pain in a tooth, you should go to the dentist. The second lowest-cost risk avoider is the dentist who prescribed the wrong antibiotic. The third lowest-cost risk avoider is the dental surgeon who did the failed implant.
None of these are the sandwich maker. Strict liability for sandwich makers really does not seem the way to go here.
What a tale of woe!
This kind of behavior does not make a convincing argument in favor of national health insurance. A responsible national health care insurance plan assumes a responsible nation. Mr. Dennis Kucinich seems to lack common sense in this olive pit mishap that led to a cascading effect of low frequency serial dental complications. It could also be a thinly veiled cover up of flagrant torts-gone-wild.
Fortunately, Professor Bradford DeLong is looking good in his new photo. All teeth appear to be present and accounted for. Well, he hasn't mentioned any upper bridgework, unlike the unlucky Mr. Kucinich, for whom the stars were certainly not right.
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