Jack Welch Critical of Obamacare

A major Wall Street figure has some problems with Obamacare:

Jack Welch, the guru of General Electric and the darling of Wall Street, is on a book tour.

The man who pioneered business innovations and put shareholder concerns on Wall Street's radar is also selling his new online MBA program -- the Jack Welch Management Institute.

So today he took a spin on MSNBC's Morning Joe program, where he delivered a telling critique of President Obama's healthcare program. The beef: It ignores the big questions.

Lashing the administration for suggesting that any government program can save money, Welch said that the Obama plan -- by putting off the table reform of malpractice insurance and ignoring issues like the cost of the last six months of life -- dooms any serious fix of the healthcare system.

"We've got to deal with tough issues if we want to get at costs," he said. While he credited Team Obama with tackling the right issues -- energy independence, the meltdown on Wall Street, rising healthcare costs -- Welch said he's concerned that "we're not getting enough debate about how to deal with each of these issues."

Malpractice reform could go a long way to reducing health care costs, even if nothing else was done. Why do you think doctors are so quick to order numerous expensive tests for every little ailment? It's not just that they want to find out what's wrong with you, but they want to avoid a lawsuit in case something bad happens and the patient goes after the doctor for not ordering a test that might have helped the diagnosis. Consequently, lots of really expensive and unnecessary procedures are being done just for the purpose of heading off a malpractice suit.

If damages were capped at appropriate levels, and better yet if "loser pays" provisions were enacted for malpractice actions, the costs of health care would plummet.

However, Obama will not tackle that problem because it would tick off the trial lawyers who are pumping millions into Dem coffers.