Think Malpractice insurance doesn't cost YOU?
Published October 07, 2004
John Edwards said the other night, regarding Bush and Cheney's proposed medical liability reform:
There are a lot of ways that he could represent this so that it was technically true, but the thrust of this statement — that huge malpractice payouts do not affect what you pay for health insurance — is patently untrue. I don't necessarily think that Bush's health care plan will solve all of our problems, but medical liability represents one of the most solvable of our healthcare problems, and we have to fix it.Because, in context, everything they're proposing, according to the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, amounts to about half of 1 percent of health-care costs in this country — half of one percent.
First of all, YOU and I pay for these large payouts in court. If a jury awards a woman $20 million in pain and suffering, the doctor's insurance company may write the $20 million check, but it is you and I who ultimately pay for it.
The insurance company has to raise premiums to offset their risk and to protect their profit margins...they pass these increased costs on to the doctors. The doctors, in order to continue to run their businesses, raise their costs, which you pay directly or your insurer pays. If your insurer pays, they ultimately have to raise premiums. If your employer pays your premiums, they ultimately have to pay you less money in order to do so. YOU PAY FOR IT, AND YOU PAY A LOT.
Take for example, a doctor in Illinois, a state which has no pain and grief caps on malpractice. According to this position paper,
By locating in Wisconsin, Indiana, Iowa or Missouri (ed. states which do) , an OB/GYN can save $75,000 to $100,000 per year on malpractice costs.If that doctor would like to make $250,000 a year, he or she has to charge 30%-40% more in order to cover his or her costs. That's a hell of a lot more than the .5% that John Edwards implied. That cost must be passed to the consumer. You and I pay for it.
Sometimes, in order to maintain their current cost structure, doctors will simply abandon high risk patients. That way, they don't get sued. This is particularly prevalent in rural communities. Local doctors in Wesern Kansas, for example, can't afford the insurance rates required to perform high risk procedures, so high risk mothers / babies have to take incredibly expensive helicopter rides to Denver or Wichita or Omaha, where hospitals will help them. This is insanity, and it costs us all tremendously.
I told a story here, about my Shih Tzu puppy, who got what would have cot me $10,000 in human care for $734. Healthcare doesn't have to be as expensive as it is. Doctors shouldn't have to leave their home states to be able to afford to practice, and they damn sure shouldn't have to turn away pregnant mothers because of the risk of a lawsuit. It flies in the face of the ethics of medicine to do so, and it flies in the face of reason that we've allowed this madness to continue this far.
It's just costing you money, and you should be sick of it. I certainly am.
love it, hate it, there's more of it at Pacetown.
- Think Malpractice insurance doesn't cost YOU?
- Published: October 07, 2004
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- Section: Politics
- Writer: Jeremy Chrysler
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Comments on this articleComments
I find it most odd that with all these outrageous legal costs, malpractice insurance companies never seem to go bankrupt. In fact they usually seem to make a profit. A profit that gets added to all our medical bills.
How is it that the profits of insurance companies are part of rising medical costs, yet money paid to people whom are injured or maimed by medical mistakes makes THEM the villains?
I'm not letting them off the hook, but I didn't mention the fact that their additional profits on the money could potentially increase cost as well. But the malpractice insurers, at least the ones that I have read about, do not seem to be profiting that much. Take this example from a Time magazine article: "St. Paul Cos., the nation's second largest medical-malpractice insurer, decided that it had had enough. As jury awards climbed, the company found in 2000 that it paid out $1.80 in defense costs for every $1 collected in premiums. The company lost nearly $1 billion in its medical coverage alone in 2001. "We just couldn't continue writing coverage with those kinds of losses," said spokeswoman Andrea Woods. "And looking ahead, the trend in jury awards was just going to continue to rise. We couldn't stay on for the ride and just hope that things would turn around." In December, St. Paul pulled out of the malpractice market completely, leaving doctors scrambling."
I've also read of similar occurrences. The Time article is 2 years old, but you can read it here: http://www.time.com/time/insidebiz/article/0,9171,1101020916-349096,00.html
For the record, I'm not calling anyone a villain in this case. I think that it's only human nature to go after large jury awards. The problem is, we all pay for it.
...Shark cratching chin and wondering what malpractice costs...
And feh and double FEH!
If doctors weren't part of some secretive cabal that refused to EXPOSE and OUT incompetent fellow-members, they wouldn't be faced with so many malpractice suits.
BTW: Been in a hospital lately? If your illness/injury doesn't kill you, the fucking staff will. And good luck finding a real RN nearby; they've been 'downsized' and replaced by MA ("medical assistants") and LVNs.
The problem IS NOT the consumers' ability to sue for compensation in a court of law. That's another ridiculous myth of the Far Right.
Oh, and they call it "tort reform" -- which is a way for them to finally remove the LAST OBSTACLE (consumer lawsuits) to an unhindered Fuck You, We-Gotta-Make-Money-At-All-Costs-Corporate-Culture.
PS: The Unabomber was right.
Shark, you make extremism a leisure activity, and for that I thank you.
I didn't say that doctors don't contribute to their own problems by hiding incompetency, nor do I endorse measures which would give corporations a blank check.
The lawsuit structure in this country is miserable. Anyone can sue anyone else for just about anything, whether he be little or big. If you think that's a good thing, well, I guess I just don't understand that...
that's right it is miserable. especially when you consider that businesses file four times more lawsuits than private citizens.
That's right, Mark. Business aren't run by citizens. Thanks for the clarity.
Actually, coporations are citizens--at least according to our crappy, corporate-servitude laws.
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Dawn's ob/gyn, an excellent and very popular doctor who saw us through both of her pregnancies and became a good friend as well, was literally driven from the state of Ohio by insane insurance premiums. he left for Minnesota right after Alex was born in December. Very sad, and a great loss to the area.