In Florida, where the state medical society told congressional investigators that all the neurosurgeons in Collier and Lee counties had stopped practicing, the GAO found at least five such specialists at work in each county. Although medical groups have repeatedly warned that doctors are reluctant to come to Florida because of escalating premiums, the GAO found that the number of new medical licenses issued by the state has increased in the past two years.
A study released last week about Maryland, where medical groups have warned about a “crisis” caused by rising malpractice premiums, reached similar conclusions. Researchers from Public Citizen Health Research Group analyzed government data and found that the number of malpractice claims filed per physician declined significantly between 1996 and 2002, as did the amount paid by insurers to cover claims. And while some groups have warned about an “exodus” of physicians, the number of doctors in the state actually increased between 1996 and 2002, according to the advocacy group.
“Every 10 years we hear the same thing: that all the doctors are leaving, that patients can’t get care; it’s sort of a ritualized dance,” said J. Robert Hunter, former federal insurance administrator who is now director of insurance for the Consumer Federation of America, a Washington-based advocacy group.
“And the reason is always the same,” added Hunter, who also served as Texas insurance commissioner. “The AMA and insurance companies blame the tort system.” Previous malpractice “crises,” Hunter said, occurred in 1975 and the mid-1980s and represent cyclical economic fluctuations; the latest downturn was delayed by the sustained economic boom of the 1990s.
“What the latest GAO report shows is that the threat about access to health care is largely overblown,” said Maryann Napoli, deputy director of the New York-based Center for Medical Consumers. “It’s interesting that [organized medicine] always zeroes in on pregnant women every time there’s a so-called crisis.
[…]
Hunter, an actuary, said that he oversaw the production of a study last year for a coalition of 100 consumer groups that tracked 30 years of malpractice payments and insurance premiums. The report concluded that there has been no malpractice “explosion” during the past three decades and that payments have been “extremely stable” since the mid-1980s.
Premiums paid by doctors, Hunter’s study found, “do not correspond to increases or decreases in payouts,” but “rise and fall in concert with the state of the economy. . . . Insurance companies raise rates when they are seeking ways to make up for declining interest rates and market-based investment losses.”
That conclusion is similar to one reached by the GAO in a report released last June. Among the causes of the latest round of malpractice premium increases, the congressional investigators found, were insurers’ losses in their investment portfolios, inadequate reserves to pay claims and artificially low rates set during the 1990s when many companies vied to attract policyholders.
[…]
But while doctors’ groups often talk about how ruinous malpractice lawsuits are for physicians, the cover story in the May 23 issue of Medical Economics, a magazine widely read by doctors, had a more reassuring message.
“The vast majority of malpractice claims are dropped by the plaintiff, dismissed by the court for lack of merit, or settled before trial for an amount within the defendant’s policy limits,” senior editor Berkeley Rice noted. “Of those cases that do go to trial, most end in victories for the defense.”
Nationally, studies have found that doctors and hospitals win about 70 percent of cases that make it to a courtroom. Multimillion-dollar awards by juries are often bigger than the amount actually paid by an insurance company or doctor; these awards can be reduced by a judge, overturned on appeal or, more commonly, are the subject of negotiations between lawyers for both sides that dramatically reduce the amount a victim receives.
[…]
[I must note that I have edited out a few general AMA attempts at defense from the above, which you can read by following the link]. Most importantly, the article concludes:
Meta