Some excerpts from a New York Times article on medical malpractice insurance rates
The link (registration required):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/22/bu...nnWPmJafyUMKsg
"But for all the worry over higher medical expenses, legal costs do not seem to be at the root of the recent increase in malpractice insurance premiums. Government and industry data show only a modest rise in malpractice claims over the last decade. And last year, the trend in payments for malpractice claims against doctors and other medical professionals turned sharply downward, falling 8.9 percent, to a nationwide total of $4.6 billion, according to data compiled by the Health and Human Services Department...
"The recent spike in premiums - which is now showing signs of steadying - says more about the insurance business than it does about the judicial system...
"Costs for most doctors last year rose between 6.9 percent and 24.9 percent compared with increases of between 10 percent and 49 percent in 2003, according to The Medical Liability Monitor, a newsletter published in Chicago.
"The most expensive place in the country is South Florida, where some obstetricians and general surgeons paid nearly $280,000 for coverage last year, according to The Monitor. Obstetricians in Illinois paid as much as $230,428, The Monitor said, while in Nebraska, the least expensive place in the country for malpractice insurance, obstetricians paid $16,194. Florida adopted a cap on awards of $500,000 to $1 million in 2003. Illinois has no cap and Nebraska has a cap of $500,000...
"Mr. Weiss of Weiss Ratings and researchers at Dartmouth College, who separately studied data on premiums and payouts for medical mistakes in the 1990's and early 2000's, said they were unable to find a meaningful link between claims payments by insurers and the prices they charged doctors.
"We didn't see it," said Amitabh Chandra, an assistant professor of economics at Dartmouth. "Surprisingly, there appears to be a fairly weak relationship."