Interview with Mike Michael Kubik, vice president of marketing ProMutual Group, a Boston-based malpractice insurer that sells medical malpractice insurance throughout New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania to 18,000 doctors, clinics and hospitals.
Interview summary: these are good times for medical malpractice insurance companies in Pennsylvania.
If you are interested in taking a honest look at the medical malpractice problem in Maryland and around the country, Philip G. Peters, Jr' s 2007 Michigan Law Review Article "Doctors and Juries" is a must read. The article concludes with this:
In recap, the data demonstrate that juries treat physicians very fairly, perhaps with too much deference. Given the limits of human capacity to reconstruct past events and the inevitable subjectivity of judgments about the quality of past performance, it is probably not possible to design a fault-based adjudication system that will have a substantially higher agreement rate in the cases with weak evidence of negligence. At most, modest improvements may be possible through careful refinements of trial procedure and the supervision of expert witnesses. As a consequence, both piecemeal reforms and more fundamental alternatives to malpractice litigation should not be driven by the mistaken assumption that juries treat physicians unfairly. Although the current system of resolving malpractice claims has many shortcomings, neither randomness nor favoritism toward injured patients is among them.
Medical malpractice costs comprise less than 1 of overall health costs. In 2002, medical related costs rose amost 10% to $1.5 trillion. Yet malpractice premiums expeditures were only $9.6 billion – making malpractice costs about .62 percent of national health care expenditures.
First, I grant you, this is old data. But, if anything, medical costs rising a lot faster than malpractice verdicts, which are reported to be falling in many jurisdictions (for example, Texas). Doctors claim defensive medicine costs are not included in this number. But I've always said I think most doctors do what is best for the patient as opposed to worrying about malpractice lawsuits. And a lot of "defensive medicine" is just good medical care.
Overlawyered has a post today from the Happy Hospitalist on defensive medicine. You can find my thought in the comments of the Overlawyered post. The commenter Deoxy seems like a nice enough guy (I think guy, anyway) who believes what he believes. But he engages in the one practice that I hate when debating medical malpractice damage caps or other malpractice tort reform related issues: everyone who does not agree with me is stupid and not looking at the issues. Because wherever you come out on this issue of medical malpractice tort reform, I can find someone smarter than you and I who does not agree with you.
By the way, this is ostensibly from a medical doctor. Which makes me wonder why all of the advertisments and, in particular, the survey as to whether women hate sex. New rule: no more commenting on blogs that have advertisements and surveys like this.
The Tort Prof Blog reports on a new study on a Georgia State study that tort reform – particularly tort reform that survives judicial scrutiny – reduces insurance premiums.
I know some medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland have argued the opposite for years but I think as a matter of textbook economics, this proposition has to be true.
Of course, that does not mean that noneconomic damage caps are just. Requiring the wrongdoer to pay full compensation for harm caused is the sign of a civilized society.
You can find a copy of the study here.
The president of the Maryland Trial Lawyers Association, Wayne M. Willoughby, writes an excellent response in the Baltimore Sun to a Maryland doctor's editorial arguing that we have a problem with frivolous medical malpractice lawsuits in Maryland.
Take whatever side you want on the medical malpractice tort reform issues but it is impossible to argue that we have a problem with frivolous malpractice cases in Maryland. The Certificate of Merit requirement coupled with the financial cost of bring a malpractice case does away with 99% of cases that should not be filed. I'm not saying that every malpractice case in Maryland should be won by the plaintiffs. That is simply not true. But tort reform advocates use "frivolous" frivolously because they know it is a good buzz word. But it is simply not a problem in Maryland.
More evidence doctors are focusing on insurance companies instead of medical malpractice lawyers. The American Medical Association has a new campaign called “the Cure for Claims.” Their mission: to force/encourage health insurers to pay claims quickly.
The AMA claims that $210 billion is added to the cost of health care because insurance companies do not pay claims in a timely manner. I’m doubting the $210 billion but I get the point. Look, medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland and around the country are nodding their heads because they know how difficult insurance companies can be. They business goal is to take in premiums and deny claims. (That line is flip and at times unfair but you get the point.)
For all of the nonsense about medical malpractice tort reform, doctors are now realizing that the real way to increase their profits and their salaries is to take on the insurance companies.
More evidence doctors are focusing on insurance companies instead of medical malpractice lawyers. The American Medical Association has a new campaign called “the Cure for Claims.” Their mission: to force/encourage health insurers to pay claims quickly.
The AMA claims that $210 billion is added to the cost of health care because insurance companies do not pay claims in a timely manner. I’m doubting the $210 billion but I get the point. Look, medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland and around the country are nodding their heads because they know how difficult insurance companies can be. They business goal is to take in premiums and deny claims. (That line is flip and at times unfair but you get the point.)
For all of the nonsense about medical malpractice tort reform, doctors are now realizing that the real way to increase their profits and their salaries is to take on the insurance companies.
The Baltimore Sun ran a story on Tuesday about the shortage of doctors in Maryland's rural areas.
The problem rural areas have is that doctors cannot earn what they can in more urban areas. Historically, MedChi, the Maryland state medical society, has tried to wrap all of these problems up and place them at the feet of Maryland medical malpractice lawyers causing their malpractice insurance rates to be too high.
This was always beyond silly because rural areas have so few successful medical malpractice claims in Maryland and malpractice rates reflect this fact. Thankfully, this Baltimore Sun article is void of any claims that the root of the problem is medical malpractice lawyers. I'm not sure if the MedChi has just dropped pushing that angle or whether the Baltimore Sun just tuned them out when the tried to blame malpractice lawyers. Either way, it is a welcome development.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/health/bal-md.rural28jul28,0,7434366.story
Many doctors in South Florida are reportedly flying with a net: 21% of medical doctors do not have medical malpractice insurance.
I have never seen data in Maryland but I suspect the numbers are lower. My solution is simple: require all doctors practicing medicine in Maryland to have medical malpractice insurance. And while we are at it, all medical malpractice lawyers in Maryland should be required to have legal malpractice insurance as well, least we be accused of being hypocrites.
Medical Economics has an editorial from a medical malpractice defense lawyer who has defended physicians in malpractice cases for over 32 years. The author express the opinion that after having tried over 200 medical malpractice jury trials and won over 90 percent of those cases that if the same cases had been tried before health courts, the number of plaintiff's medical malpractice verdicts would have been much higher.
The idea behind health courts is that specially trained judges or a panel of medical doctors would hear medical malpractice cases without juries and decide liability and/or damages for the malpractice plaintiff.
This malpractice defense lawyer in this editorial praises the malpractice defense bar in Ohio for aggressively defending "questionable cases" as opposed to settling cases where there is only a small possibility of an adverse outcome and goes on to praise doctors for taking "time from their practices to participate in trials." (Actually, I'm not sure participation was optional but okay.)
The author concludes with a reference to that pesky little Seventh Amendment's right to a jury trial, a right that medical malpractice tort reform advocates don't mind turning away from to suit their purposes. Maybe James Madison and his colleagues were on to something when they decided that there was something important about a jury trial. Who knew?
Okay, so now medical malpractice lawyers on both sides believe that health courts do not make any sense. Which makes all the more puzzling the Maryland State Bar Association decision to have a discussion group - that was poorly attended I'm told - on health courts in Maryland. We tried health claims arbitration in Maryland. It failed miserably.
