Premium, Debate Rise in Malpractice Arena; Insurers, Trends or Lawyers Could be to Blame, Some Say
Dayton Daily News
August 18, 2002

Doctors are paying dramatically more for malpractice insurance while earning less for patient care, a squeeze between costs and income that could eventually limit some medical services.

There is general agreement in describing the problem. But the principals differ strongly on whether legislators should solve it by imposing regulations on patients, doctors or the insurance industry. Each side serves up a popular scapegoat to reduce the complicated issue to two dimensions, proposing lawyers and insurance companies as its emblematic villains.

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This is not the first time that malpractice premiums have spiraled. After it happened in the mid-1970s, according to Americans for Insurance Reform, the insurance industry's profit rate jumped from 2.6 percent to 19.7 percent in two years. It happened again in the mid 1980s, with a three-year jump from 1.9 percent to 15.4 percent.

The current leap in insurance premiums goes beyond malpractice and extends worldwide. "I was just on Australia's 60 Minutes show," said J. Robert Hunter, federal insurance commissioner in the Ford and Carter administrations and insurance director of the Consumer Federation of America.

"They're having exactly the same problem," Hunter said. "Canada is, too, even though they both have much stricter tort requirements than ours. That's because it's not a tort problem. It's an insurance problem."

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