For Immediate Release:
May 29, 2002
Contact: Joanne Doroshow
212/267-2801
California Restrictions On Malpractice Victims Have Not Affected Malpractice Premiums
Premium Data Shows California Law Is No Model For The Nation
Los Angeles, CA -- Data released today by two consumer groups show that California's 22-year experience with the nation's most draconian limits on the rights of medical malpractice victims has failed to slow premium increases for doctors and hospitals. In fact, over the last decade, the average malpractice premium in California has grown more quickly than it has in the nation overall.
The California-based Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights and New York-based Center for Justice & Democracy (CJ&D) hired nationally recognized actuary J. Robert Hunter, former Texas Insurance Commissioner and Federal Insurance Administrator under Ford and Carter, to compare national malpractice premium trends to those in California. Hunter found that from 1991 to 2000, malpractice premiums in California have stayed close to national premium trends. The 2000 average premium per doctor in California was only 8.2 percent below that of the nation ($7,200.61 vs. $7,843.75) while the average malpractice premium in California between 1991 and 2000 actually grew more quickly (3.5 percent), than it did in the nation overall (1.9 percent.) According to Hunter, "there is not much difference in the rates or the rate of change between California and the nation based on the latest decade of experience."
In the mid-1970s, California enacted severe laws restricting the rights of patients who have been injured by malpractice, allowing them to recover no more than $250,000 in noneconomic compensation no matter how egregious the malpractice or serious the injury. The medical establishment is campaigning to spread this severe cap on damages not only to other states, but to the entire nation in recently introduced federal legislation (H.R. 4600), arguing falsely that this cap has kept premiums dramatically downward.
"If there are savings to limiting the rights and recovery of innocent victims of dangerous and culpable doctors, then insurers have not passed them on to physicians," said Jamie Court, executive director of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights. "California is a failed model for the national restrictions being proposed on patients. California patients have been denied adequate compensation and representation for their injuries, and California doctors have seen almost no premium savings. Only the insurers have gotten rich in the good times."
"This study disputes one of the most sensationalized fictions driving the movement to limit lawsuits against malpracticing doctors and hospitals --the notion that California's brutal restrictions on patients' rights, enacted in the mid-1970s, have slowed the growth of malpractice premiums," said CJ&D Executive Director Joanne Doroshow. "In fact, the opposite has happened. Over the last 10 years, California's premiums have grown faster
than the nation's.
"This analysis has, for the first time, exposed as an insidious public relations scam the notion that California's cruel law has controlled the growth of malpractice insurance premiums. This law has had terrible consequences for many innocent people, while doing nothing to improve the affordability of liability insurance for doctors."
The Center for Justice & Democracy is the only national consumer organization in the country exclusively dedicated to protecting our civil justice system. If you'd like more information, please contact us.
