Doctor Strike in Vermont? Experts Say No
Burlington Free Press
January 4, 2003

West Virginia doctors might be on strike over high malpractice insurance premiums, but Vermont doctors would never take such action, health policy experts said this week.

Why? Vermont doctors have lower insurance rates, and such labor activism is simply not part of the state's heritage.
"I don't believe doctors would do that," said Elizabeth Costle, state commissioner of Banking, Insurance, Securities and Health Care.

"It is not part of the physician culture here," agreed Paul Harrington of the Vermont Medical Society. That level of confrontation, he said, would be unlikely in Vermont.

That said, experts disagreed as to whether Vermont doctors are facing their own crisis over medical malpractice insurance rates.

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However, state documents indicate that the 2001 revenues and claims fit a pattern. Since 1997 malpractice premiums in Vermont have totaled almost $43 million, while losses ran $25 million, a payment rate of 59 percent.

National research has also found that rising rates result less from booming lawsuits and more from how insurance companies fare in the stock and bond markets.

"Medical insurance premiums charged by insurance companies do not correspond to increases or decreases in payouts," said an Oct. 10 report by Americans for Insurance Reform, a coalition of consumer groups.

"Insurance premiums increase or decrease in direct relationship to the strength or weakness of the economy, reflecting the gains or losses experienced by the insurance industry's market investments," the report said.

For a copy of the complete article, contact AIR.