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New Study in Illiniois Malpractice Debate (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, March 29, 2007) New Data Confirms That Doctors Were Price-Gouged by the Insurance Industry During this Decade (March 28, 2007) News Release: Commerical Insurance Rates Continue to Fall While Insurer Profits Continue to Skyrocket to Record Levels (October 25, 2006) (PDF) The Insurance Industry’s Troubling Response To Hurricane Katrina (News Release, January 11, 2006)(PDF) Think Malpractice is Driving Up Health Care Costs? Think Again.
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Big insurance companies
want to make their problem your problem.
Their problem: Poor business practices, shady accounting, money lost in the stock market, not enough profits.* Theyve even scared some people into fighting their
battle for them, Reform the insurance industry instead of taking away rights to hold wrongdoers accountable in court. For more information about this problem and measures that can help solve it, see AIR's mission statement. * According to the June 24, 2002, Wall Street Journal, "Following a cycle that recurs in many parts of the business, a price war [among insurance companies] that began in the early 1990s led insurers to sell malpractice coverage to obstetrician- gynecologists at rates that proved inadequate to cover claims. Some of these carriers had rushed into malpractice coverage, because an accounting practice widely used in the industry made the area seem more profitable in the early 1990s than it really was. A decade of short-sighted price slashing led to industry losses of nearly $3 billion last year. "I don't like to hear insurance-company executives say it's the tort [injury-law] system -- it's self-inflicted," says Donald J. Zuk, chief executive of Scpie Holdings Inc., a leading malpractice insurer in California. What's more, the litigation statistics most insurers trumpet are incomplete. The statistics come from Jury Verdict Research, a Horsham, Pa., information service, which says its 2,951-case malpractice database has large gaps. It collects award information unsystematically, and it can't say how many cases it misses. Most important, the database excludes victories by doctors and hospitals - verdicts worth zero dollars." (emphasis added) |
info@insurance-reform.org
Americans for Insurance Reform, 90 Broad St., Suite 401,
New York, NY 10004; Phone: 212/267-2801; Fax: 212/459-0919
(AIR is a project of the Center for Justice & Democracy)