When paid by Volkswagen, the fines should go to patent free research of better diesel engines… and emission controls

Sir, Brooke Masters write “Drivers who bought VW’s “clean diesel” engines are now faced with technical fixes that could well reduce both fuel efficiency and power. Their communities have much dirtier than anticipated air” “Lawsuit on behalf of 1m $1 investors is something to fear. Somebody ought to sue” October 3.

Indeed but when suing make sure that if you win it can make a difference, not just make up for something secondary.

Many Volkswagen’s diesel engine buyers, who said they bought it out of environmental concern, many of them just green show-offs, now have a legitimate grievance being left out hanging like fools. But, if they are going to sue, they should at least request that, if successful, all fines paid by VW should go to finance the development of patent free better diesel motors.

Brooke Master’s also writes: “There are many frivolous [and not non frivolous] law suites were the attorneys on both sides walked away with millions of dollars in fees”. And with that she reminds me of that, at least in the case of banks being sued, all lawyers should be paid their fees in bank shares… I mean so that we do not hurt the lending capacity of banks and with that of ten thousands of innocent bystanders borrowers… the sort of civilian casualties.

Perhaps if we start looking into the issue of where compensation payments and fees go to, and how it is paid, then perhaps we will start looking at tort reform from a much more productive angle.

@PerKurowski

But there is a minimum minimorum reform that the US health sector needs for a starter.

Sir, being a foreigner living in the US I have thanks God not needed to get too acquainted with its so heatedly debated health sector; and I pray it stays that way. In this respect I cannot really comment much on Clive Crook’s “Medicare for all may be the best cure” June 15, but yet I feel the need to point out something that to me seems to go against any sense of justice, which is that as I have witnessed, the uninsured are often required to pay many times the price insurance companies pay for exactly the same medicine or treatment.

If beer companies compete that is good for beer drinkers and does not affect those who do not drink beer. But in the case of health services it is obvious that many of the cost reductions negotiated by the competing insurance companies, end up expected to be recovered from those uninsured.

If it was in my hand (perhaps it's good that’s not the case) I would put up a prohibition to charge anyone more than 5% to max 20% over the minimum price offered to any insurance company… and then take  health reforms from there. Not doing so forces millions of uninsured who could pay reasonable fees to either swamp free service emergency rooms, or being financially abused.

Is not cost-discrimination against the uninsured a much worse discrimination than many of those other discriminations being protested so loudly?