Day on Torts
From the American Association for Justice’s new report, The Insurance Hoax: How Doctors and Patients Pay for the Huge Earnings of Medical Malpractice Insurers :
As Congress debates nationwide health care reform, a new analysis reveals malpractice insurers have long-played a cruel hoax on legislators and the public. By systematically distorting profits and losses, insurers created phony “financial crises,” so lawmakers would limit the legal rights of injured patients. Today, while premiums and health care costs skyrocket, malpractice insurers have average profits higher than 99 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
The key findings of the report, which analyzes the annual financial statements of the 10 largest U.S. medical malpractice insurers, include:
• The average profit of these insurance companies is higher than 99 percent of all Fortune 500 companies and 35 times higher than the Fortune 500 average for the same time period.
• Malpractice insurers have seen their profit margins range from 5.9 percent to 74.8 percent, with an average of 31.2 percent.
Read the entire report here.