It's insurance that needs to be reformed
Athens Banner-Herald
February 21, 2010

If legislators are truly interested in lowering health care costs for consumers, they should embrace insurance reform.

For years now, insurance companies have argued that passing tort reform and limiting the payouts patients can get for malpractice suits will help lower insurance premiums. Doctors and legislators have been convinced that malpractice lawsuits represent the big boogeyman responsible for skyrocketing health care costs.

Yet, in states where tort reform has been passed, have insurance premiums gone down? For doctors in some states, yes, but for consumers, health care insurance premiums have not.

A study conducted by medical economists with the University of Alabama in 2008 concluded that tort reform had little to no effect on consumer's rising health insurance costs. The researchers looked at 27 states where legislatures had enacted laws limiting punitive damages in malpractice suits.

Additionally, a report from the Commonwealth Fund found that nationally, premium costs that families pay for employer-sponsored health insurance increased 119 percent between 1999 and 2008. The report also notes that those premiums could go up an additional 94 percent to an average of $23,842 per family by 2020 if health care costs continue climbing at the current rate.

Still another report issued last summer by the Americans for Insurance Reform indicated that medical malpractice insurance companies are reaping profits well above the rest of the "property casualty industry, which has been remarkably profitable over the last five years."

The Americans for Insurance Reform also found that in states with laws limiting malpractice suits, the doctors pay pretty much the same level of premiums as states that don't have such laws.

"In fact, medical malpractice claims constitute one-fifth of 1 percent of annual health care costs in the country," the report stated.

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For a copy of the complete article, contact AIR.