Day on Torts

Here is yet another article that studies what is actually going in the medical malpractice insurance industry.

The NYT article says that "a study to be released today by the Center for Justice and Democracy, a consumer advocacy group in New York, may add fuel to that debate [about the controversy over insurance rates]. The study, compiled from regulatory filings by insurers to state regulators, finds that net claims for medical malpractice paid by 15 leading insurance companies have remained flat over the last five years, while net premiums have surged 120 percent. From 2000 to 2004, the increase in premiums collected by the leading 15 medical malpractice insurance companies was 21 times the increase in the claims they paid, according to the study."

Will state legislators who bought the prior misrepresentations reverse the tort reform measures they passed? They should. They were sold a bill of goods.

Of course, the study is bogus, but why let that affect the analysis?

The best argument the industry could come up with to attack the study was that it did not include costs of defending cases. The study found that malpractice rates increased by 120 percent from 2000 through 2004, while the amount of money paid in claims went up by 5.7 percent.

Ted: are you claiming that defense costs make up the difference? If so, will you undertake the effort to limit the hourly rate of defense counsel to keep down the price of malpractice insurance?

Face it, Ted, the current crisis is in large part a product a poor pricing practices by insurers during the 90s combined with a decline in investment income.

"The best argument the industry could come up with to attack the study was that it did not include costs of defending cases."

There are several more arguments than that. Unfortunately, you excised the link I posted in the comment. Click on "Ted" to see the arguments Angoff still hasn't refuted. Just because the AP has done a crummy job of reporting about the study doesn't make the study bogus.

If med-mal insurers are "gouging," how come ATLA doesn't invest some of its lobbying funds to create a profitable med-mal insurer that (1) undercharges the "gouging" insurers; (2) makes additional profits for itself; and (3) ends the debate over a med-mal crisis?

Most med-mal insurers are actually non-profit mutual insurers. Are the doctors conspiring to overcharge themselves?

Ted - I did not delete your link. The software program did it automatically.

As I have indicidated before, ATLA is not in the insurance business. There is no reason for ATLA to invest substantial sums of money to set up an insurance company (that no doctor would ever purchase coverage from) simply to prove what the is being proven by independent studies every day: the insurance crisis is a manufactured crisis.

ATLA is not in the insurance business? Don't tell that to the ATLA Insurance Administrator, at 1 (800) 482-ATLA. And what's www.atlainsurance.com?

Nor should you disappoint yourself by clicking the "TED" on this post.

Anyway, it doesn't have to be ATLA. There are lots of centi-millionaire trial attorneys out there.

Why are you convinced doctors wouldn't buy cheaper insurance if it was made available to them? For that matter, if medical-malpractice insurance is such a lucrative field, why are insurance companies *leaving* the field? I'd like to see that supposed meeting: "Gosh, we're making a huge profit gouging doctors. Let's stop writing insurance and leave all these profits for our competitors to take." The facts on the ground just aren't consistent with the ATLA propaganda. Indeed, the failure of the trial bar to put its money where its mouth is and compete with existing insurers shows that ATLA doesn't believe its own propaganda.

The insurance crisis reflects the costs of malpractice liability imposed by the plaintiffs' bar. Only by the contrived manipulation of statistics to mislead can one conclude otherwise. And you don't identify one thing about Jim Copland's critique that's inaccurate.

ATLA is not in the insurance business. Like many other prof associations it has "sponser" companies that market to ATLA members. Surely you know this.

I clicked on "Ted" and was neither surprised or disappointed. I have followed the insurance industry line of bull on these issues for 20 years. For example, the companies always say that the stats look at "past paid losses" and not "current losses." Of course they do - past paid losses is the only solid info that is public. Current losses are estimates of the future payments on files unaccessable to the public - numbers that are almost always higher than the ultimate payments. I am not complaining about that practice - what I am complaining about is how companies knowingly misuse that information to create unreasonable fear in the marketplace and manipulate legislators.

Finally, Ted, the failure of ATLA or any of its members to get in the insurance business proves absolutely nothing. The facts speak for themselves and, unfortunately for you and yours, as the facts come out in this insurance crisis (the 4th in 30 years) it will become obvious to all (except people who profit from the crisis, and even most of them know) that it is just another line of baloney.