Are large jury awards in malpractice suits the only reason for...

[battleknight24]

... high insurance premiums?

[Archae]

1. Hell no!

Insurance companies are corrupt as hell, and doctors cover up for the bad apples in their ranks.

[Somawas]

2. No

Google it. The only reliable indicator of movement in malpractice premiums is the Dow. It's an inverse correlation. When the insurance cos can make megabucks in the market, they do not need megabucks from the insureds. And vice-versa.

[battleknight24]

3. How well-regulated is the insurance industry?

?

[dogman]

4. Some companies are actually owned by groups of doctors

who profit at the expense of fellow doctors, therefore patients. They also do not dump high risk doctors as quickly as they should. They do lobby a lot however.

[Beaverhausen]

5. when is the last time you heard about an insurance company

having to lay off thousands of workers?

[battleknight24]

6. Shit... I never though about that...

... interesting...

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

7. You are assuming they are any reason at all

Even the industry has yet to prove that one...

[battleknight24]

8. true...

... a lot of malpractice suits out there are legit... I read in the newspaper once that a woman had her breast removed. Then it turned out that her test results were mixed up, and that she didn't have cancer after all.

There are bad lawyers out there, no question... but preventable medical errors happen too.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

10. You won't find a lot of bad lawyers doing malpractice

It's one of the most expensive types of cases to litigate

[no_hypocrisy]

9. Another reason: insurance companies routinely pay out settlements

because going to trial, even if the doctors, nurse, hospitals, etc. are not liable for malpractice, is more expensive than paying off the plaintiff.

[battleknight24]

11. Do you think caps on non-economic damages help?

?

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

13. yeah..they help doctors who practice bad medicine to continue to

obtain coverage

[gratuitous]

14. Well, caps certainly help the worst offenders

But medical malpractice is still a very iffy area of law. Our office has pursued a couple of very egregious claims (doctors missed an obvious indicator for a seizure/stroke on an x-ray), but we turn down dozens more because of the difficulty of proving negligence or bad practice; we've also never gone to trial on a med mal case. There aren't a lot of doctors who will testify against their colleagues.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

12. No..they mostly don't go to trial because they know they'll get

their ass.

Their three main defenses are:
we aren't liable
you aren't injured
even if you are injured, you're not as injured as you say you are...more often than not...they are in the wrong...nobody GIVES money away but for small nuisance sums that aren't enough to mess with their bottom line.