| Tyrannical said: I wonder how much lawyers add to the overall cost of healthcare. Not just the ambulance chasers, but medical malpractise and drug liability cases. I bet a lot of money could be solved with a settlement system with no lawyers. |
http://www.makethemaccountable.com/myth/RisingCostOfMedicalMalpracticeInsurance.htm
Rising doctors' premiums not due to lawsuit awards
Study suggests insurers raise rates to make up for investment declines
By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff | June 1, 2005
Re-igniting the medical malpractice overhaul debate, a new study by Dartmouth College researchers suggests that huge jury awards and financial settlements for injured patients have not caused the explosive increase in doctors' insurance premiums.
The researchers said a more likely explanation for the escalation is that malpractice insurance companies have raised doctors' premiums to compensate for falling investment returns.
The Dartmouth economists studied actual payments made to patients between 1991 and 2003, the results of which were published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs. Some previous studies have examined jury awards, which often are reduced after trial to comply with doctors' insurance coverage maximums or because the plaintiff settles for less money to avoid an appeal. Researchers found that payments grew an average of 4 percent annually during the years covered by the study, or 52 percent overall since 1991, but only 1.6 percent a year since 2000. The increases are roughly equivalent to the overall rise in healthcare costs, said Amitabh Chandra, lead author and an assistant professor of economics at the New Hampshire college…
Meanwhile, malpractice insurance premiums for internists, general surgeons, and obstetricians have skyrocketed since 2000, jumping 20 to 25 percent in 2002 alone…
''It's not payments that's causing this," Chandra said. ''The simple explanation that comes to mind is the underwriting cycle. If they're making less money from the investment side of things, it's going to cause [insurance companies] to raise rates."
The study's conclusions are sure to generate praise from some malpractice lawyers and outrage from many doctors and insurance company executives, who argue that jury awards are out of control and the solution is a cap on noneconomic damages for plaintiffs, commonly referred to as ''pain and suffering" awards.
The American Medical Association, a national organization based in Chicago that represents doctors, and the Physician Insurers Association of America, a coalition of malpractice insurers based in Maryland, are lobbying for a nationwide $250,000 cap, and President Bush has made a cap on noneconomic damages a key component of his malpractice reform proposal…
Center for Justice & Democracy
MYTHBUSTER
THE SEVEN MOST IMPORTANT THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT MEDICAL MALPRACTICE
February 10, 2004
1. Insurance industry profits are going through the roof and not a single doctors’ group has demanded any accountability from, or reforms of, the insurance industry for its excessive price-gouging of doctors.
MYTHBUSTER: Insurance industry profits, including those of medical malpractice insurers, are booming
Insurance Companies Raking in Huge Profits
2. It has been proven repeatedly that “caps” and other “tort reforms” do not work. States that have enacted so-called “tort reform” have only seen their insurance rates continue to shoot up after passing severe liability limits. In fact, doctors from at least three of the nine states represented at the national news conference scheduled for February 10 - Ohio, Missouri and Texas - and two out of seven states being targeted for media campaigns - Nevada and Florida - all have severe caps and in each case, insurers have continued to increase insurance rates.
Limiting Liability Will Not Fix Insurance Problems
3. Lawsuits are not limiting access to health care. The U.S. General Accounting Office found, after an extensive investigation, that doctors’ groups have misled, fabricated evidence, or, at the very least, wildly overstated their case about how malpractice insurance problems have limited access to health care. The only health care access problems that GAO could confirm were isolated and the result of factors having nothing at all to do with the legal system.
MEDICAL MALPRACTICE: Implications of Rising Premiums on Access to Health Care
4. Medical malpractice costs are a tiny percentage of overall health care expenditures. Medical malpractice insurance and claims costs represent, at most, only 2 percent of overall health care spending in this country, according to both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office.
President Uses Dubious Statistics on Costs of Malpractice Lawsuits
Think Malpractice is Driving Up Health Care Costs? Think Again. Tillinghast’s "Tort Cost" Figures Vastly Overstate the Cost of the American Legal System
5. Medical malpractice lawsuit filings, payouts and jury verdicts are all dropping. According to the National Center for State Courts (NCSC), “the 1992 to 2001 trend in medical malpractice filings per 100,000 population has only fluctuated minimally, with an overall 1 percent decrease in per capita filings.”
Tort and Contract Caseloads in State Trial Courts
· Total medical malpractice payouts dropped 6.9 percent from 2001 to 2002 according to a National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) analysis by Public Citizen.
Quick Facts on Medical Malpractice Issues
· Jury verdicts in medical malpractice cases are stagnant, even according to Jury Verdict Research data, which tends to over-inflate award trends.
6. Most malpractice is caused by a small number of doctors who are never sanctioned. Nothing is being done to crack down on the 5 percent of doctors (1 out of 20) that are responsible for 54 percent of malpractice payouts.
Quick Facts on Medical Malpractice Issues
7. Medical malpractice is continuing at epidemic proportions in this country. In 1999, the Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, found that medical errors cause between 44,000 and 98,000 deaths in hospitals each year. Even when using the lower estimate, deaths due to medical errors exceed the number attributable to the 8th leading cause of death. More die in a given year as a result of medical errors than from motor vehicle accidents (43,458), breast cancer (42,297) or AIDS (16,516).
To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
