Great idea. If nobody is held responsible for their negligence or the injuries said negligence causes, we won\’t need insurance and a whole lot of lawyers will be out of work – those that represent plaintiffs AND those hired by the insurance companies, which would ceae to exist. Jacqueline would be out of a job, of course, but she would, at least, have the satisfaction that so are a whole lot of despicable trial lawyers. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Ms. Rice said \”the cost of care to that child over his or her lifetime will likely be in excess of $10 million\”. Says whom? That\’s only if they build in enough to profit the lawyers taking care of the case!
Since you lawyers calim to be so much more educated than the rest of us, perhaps you should read up on your history of the origins of insurance companies. There were insurance companies before there were modern tort lawyers. Insurance was a concept that began a long time before the British legal system evolved and the American Legal system evolved. Insurance was pooled monies collected by a group who wanted to protect their interests regarding the possible total loss of goods due to unforeseen disasters while enroute to their destination by ship.
I am sorry to disappoint all the lawyers who got their panties in a bunch over my posts, but with LESS lawyers and LESS frivolous lawsuits, we insurance agents and brokers would still have jobs – and our E & O would probably cost us a hell of alot less, too!
As to the \”evil\” insurance companies screwing over insureds and doctors, how about all the doctors, dentists and hospitals that exaggerate their billing codes to inflate their insurance claim payments? Let\’s talk about that!
Here in Erie, PA, a young mother with an unemployed husband (he was in technical school)went to work in a local hospital here after moving here from Ohio. At this hospital, surgeons and doctors pressure the medical coders into falsifying the codes in order to effect more payments from insurance carriers (especially for workers comp and health insurance carriers). When she refused to \”play the game\” because of the risk of her possibly getting busted for insurance fraud, which is a felony in PA – punnishable by revocation of professional licenses, steep fines and a prison sentence, this girl found herself fired. Now Erie is somewhat of a small city, where all the local doctors, lawyers, CEO\’s and bank presidents hob-knob at the same exclusive dining club and yacht club. The hospital doing this is one of the region\’s last large employers. When this woman went to seek justice for the unfair loss of her job for refusing to commit what amounted to insurance fraud, unlike the rest of her department of medical coders, she was told by a young and conscientious lawyer that although she had a very strong and win-able case – both for wrongful termination AND insurance fraud, he was not willing to go up against the region\’s largest employer because he was afraid it would jeopardize his future and his career as a local lawyer.
Also, since this woman refused to \”play the game\”, she also found herself unoficially black-balled from any other comparable employment, except for maybe a crappy minimum wage job at Wal-Mart\’s. This lawyer confirmed this for her and it was affirmed by other lawyers in the area, none of whom would take her case and help her get some justice. So much for lawyers being out for the disenfranchised. This poor working mother nearly ended up homeless as a result of the loss of her job and being unable to get another job to support herself and her family. She and her infant son and husband (who had to drop school when they moved) had to try to start all over with no money in another state where she finally could get another job, all because of the lack of acess to justice afforded to this woman (and lack of justice afforded to the insurance carriers who were overbilled) – and a good ole boy network of greedy doctors, lawyers and a powerful and rich hospital executive. Meanwhile, insurance costs for individuals, groups and workers comp policies as a whole are higher than they would have to be if not for those seeking to get unjustly enriched by \”playing the game\” of insurance fraud. It happens more often than you think.
Second case: A local dentist is, and has been, getting away with false insurance claims for work (not) done on Medicaid patients, for several YEARS. I have it on reliable authority that he has submitted copies of his treatment plans to one of the local residential facilities for mentally handicapped residents, all who are on Medicaid and SSI. Yet, when several of the people who work at this facility checked some of their residents who were still complaining of toothaches, they found that this dentist had not drilled and filed the teeth as he claimed he did, both in his claims filed to Medicaid and also stated in the individual residents\’ treatment plans which this home keeps a record of. This dentist drives an $85K Hum-V and lives in a $500K home w/ an acre of lakefront property w/ private beach access. Since these types of cases would be morally right and just in pursuing, you would think that at least one lawyer would be ready to jump all over that hospital and the dentist, for the economic harm and medical harm they have caused respectively to the people involved. However, because these types of cases don\’t bring in big bucks in billable hours, and the lawyers hob-knob with the perpetrators of the aforementioned injustices, the aggrieved in each case were denied access to the legal system – justice had been denied. Now who do we blame for that – Milton Berle?
Jacqueline: I don\’t claim to be better educated or smarter than anyone else. In fact, I know lots of people who I think are a lot smarter than I am. If I was so bright, I wouldn\’t be handling medical negligence cases 31 years after the $250,000 MICRA cap was enacted by the State Legislature at the behest of the insurance industry and medical associations. Clearly, $250,000 in 1975 was worth a whole lot more then than it is now. In fact, it would have been possible to buy a mansion in Beverly Hills for that amount back then; it wouldn\’t purchase a median-priced home anywhere in the City today. Since 1975, the costs associated with litigation have skyrocketed, so it doesn\’t make a whole lot of financial sense to be representing people who have been injured by preventable medical mistakes – at least in California.
So, I\’m not claiming to be smarter than you are. I\’m just suggesting that, perhaps, attorneys are not the root of all evil, as you seem to suggest.
Certainly, there are people who take advantage of insurance – or try to. Anyone who defrauds an insurance company, should be held accountable for that. We can certainly agree on that.
If you don\’t think some insurance companies sometimes take advantage of their position of power to the economic disadvantage of their insureds, then we shall have to agree to disagree on that.
Not all lawyers are rich and/or greedy. Many of us do the work we do because it is enormously satisfying to help someone who is almost invariably at a disadvantage in the legal system. Helping others is what I do in my work and is why I also have been active in community service organizations for almost 20 years.
Wow, was this article linked on triallawyers.com? Were all of you rallied to comment?
The simple fact is this:
-Tort costs are skyrocketing.
-Legal defence costs are skyrocketing.
-Insurance companies are prohibited by insurance depts. from increasing their premiums to compensate.
Take a look at Med Mal. If it was such a profitable venture, where are all the players? Market exodus seems to be the story of the industry. The number of players has gone down substantially from even 7 years ago. Why? There simply are no profits!
If it truly was an issue of compensating victims, then why do plaintiff attornies go after parties not directly involved? Take the Rhode Island Night club fire? Who is being sued? Home Depot, among others. Why? They have the deeper pockets. This, in turn, increases insurer defence costs, because each named defendant has to spend defence money, even if they are not even remotely responsible.
Please, lawyers, don\’t tell me this is a victims\’ rights issue. It may not be a pure money grab like others say. But it surely is a lot worse than the trial lawyers lobby makes it out to be.
I am curious to know if the lawyers who make a living at the expense of the rest us working Americans can justify the costs we bear to subsidize their living standards. These run away defense costs are forcing our jobs out of the US,making us less competitive, and will result in a lower standard of living for our future generations.
This is my last comment. I am willing to concede that insurance defense costs are probably going up. The cost of everything goes up over time. And, insurance companies are litigating cases that previously would have been resolved at an earlier point in time by settlement than occurs now, which invariably means that there will be greater defense costs.
Frankly, I can\’t figure out why med mal insurance isn\’t profitable. It certainly should be, at least in California. There has been a $250,000 cap on non-ecoomic damages for 30 years. Economic losses track the increase in wages and health care. In addition to this cap, carriers which used to write medical malpractice policies for $5 and $10 million rarely offer more than $1 million in coverage. With the median-priced home in Los Angeles County now valued at almost a half million, the liability limit is ridiculously low.
So if, for example, if I represent a child who was severely brain damaged because the obstetrician who was called in by the hospital to perform an emergency C-section because the fetal monitor strip showed the baby was in trouble didn\’t arrive at the hospital for more than three hours because he was at dinner, the cost of care to that child over his or her lifetime will likely be in excess of $10 million.
The doctor only has a million dollars in coverage. Unless the doctor is also independently wealthy, most lawyers will make a policy limits demand to the defendant. That means the case will settle for the $1 million, if the doctor and the carrier agree to pay it. If they do not and the case goes to trial, the carrier will be on the hook for the entire verdict.
It is generally only when the insurance companies decide to roll the dice on a case with damages in excess of the insurance policy limit that it can get tagged for more than $1 million – at least in this state.
Furthermore, the number of medical negligence cases is falling – not, unfortunately, because there is less medical malpractice, but because the economics of these cases make less and less sense as time further erodes the value of the $250,000 cap. If a child dies because a nurse mistakenly gives him 100 times the dosage of medication ordered by a doctor, the most the family can recover is $250,000 – since that child has little or no economic \”value.\” Today, the costs paid to experts, court reporters, the filing fees and other costs associated with such a case can easily exceed $50k before trial and twice that amount if the case goes to trial. It\’s hard to justify putting $100,000 at risk when the most you can cover on behalf of the client is $250,000 – an amount, by the way, the carrier will never pay in settlement, since that\’s the most they could possibly lose at trial.
I tend to think insurance companies are making a profit in med mal. Most got into trouble because they were vying for market share during the \’90\’s, when their stock portfolios were performing so well. Prices were kept artificially low during that decade. When the stock market tanked, the insurers had to boost earnings and realized that this product was not priced appropriately. So, instead of raising rates 3-7% per year during the \’90\’s, the carriers raised rates 50-100% and declared a medical malpractice insurance crisis. We\’ve seen this all before – every time the stock market takes a dive.
Overall, insurance profits are up dramatically. I don\’t think we have to worry too much about the carriers or the agents who sell their products.
John said: \”Once again the insurance industry trots out its propaganda! Create a phony crisis, blame a particular group of people and then start taking people\’s civil rights. Where have I heard that before?\”
Today\’s headline: \”Jury Awards $6.5M to Panic Disorder Patient March 20, 2006
A health care case worker in Santa Rosa, Calif., who said he was denied a promotion because a panic disorder prevented him from meeting clients won $6.5 million in an employment discrimination lawsuit.\”
What happens is that trial lawyers write bad laws that they can profit from, like the ADA. Politicos on the take vote for these laws, then morons like this guy sue under them. Please tell us what this has to do with \”civil rights.\”
I think that when plaintiffs lose a lawsuit they should have to reimburse the defendants, and contingency fees should be illegal.
Insurance companies are not out to bilk the consumers. They simply try to figure out the expected amount of losses, add on enough to cover expenses and hopefully make a reasonable profit, like any other company on the planet.
Whenever you hear of insurers getting big rate increases, remember that insurance departments are continually fighting insurance companies to justify these rate changes. Sometimes insurers are denied the rate increases, and they have little recourse but to continue asking for them.
As for the whole tort litigation concept, while the lawyers are certainly doing their part to make a buck, don\’t forget behind each of these claims there is always an insured that either has a legitimate claim or is trying to bilk the system as well.
My my, aren\’t we all touchy? Perhaps we should all step back here and look at this unemotionally.
I have been in the insurance busienss for almost 32 years. I have seen crooked lawyers. Here in NY, the state even has a fund to compensate those who have been robbed by their attorneys. But crooked lawyers are not the issue.
I have seen crooked insurance brokers, but that again is not the issue.
The true issue is our civil justice system that enables, no ENCOURAGES, out of control litigation. Sometimes insurance covers this litigation, sometimes not. Perhaps one way to address this issue would be to change the system so that if a civil action were to fail, the losing plaintiff would then have to pay the cost\’s of the defendants. Then let\’s see how many people sue because they were burned by hot coffee (imagine the nerve, not to mention the negligence, of an eating establishment that serves hot coffee … HOT!).
Here in NY, the trial lawyers\’ lobby has a lot of power, probably more than the insurance industry\’s. NY has the so-called scaffold laws (201, 241) that are quite ridiculous . When you ask state legislators about them, they respond that the trial lawyers keep them in place, despite how crazy they are.
Most insurance agents (as well as many other professionals) have to practice defensive business methods to protect themselves from lawsuits, many of which are frivolous. A lot of the cost of medicine is related to extra, perhaps unecessay tests that are ordered for defensive reasons.
I got so frustrated over the years by what I considered to be lawyer driven frivolous law suits that I decided to join them, instead of fighting them. So, a number of years ago I began to specialize in insuring attorneys and law firms. I make money from insuring lawyers aainst lawsuits by OTHER attorneys. And you should should hear when lawyers get sued! They scream like stuck pigs. It\’s so gratifying.
We have updated our privacy policy to be more clear and meet the new requirements of the GDPR. By continuing to use our site, you accept our revised Privacy Policy.
Great idea. If nobody is held responsible for their negligence or the injuries said negligence causes, we won\’t need insurance and a whole lot of lawyers will be out of work – those that represent plaintiffs AND those hired by the insurance companies, which would ceae to exist. Jacqueline would be out of a job, of course, but she would, at least, have the satisfaction that so are a whole lot of despicable trial lawyers. Sounds like a win-win situation to me.
Ms. Rice said \”the cost of care to that child over his or her lifetime will likely be in excess of $10 million\”. Says whom? That\’s only if they build in enough to profit the lawyers taking care of the case!
To Nick Timko & Linda Fermoyle Rice:
Since you lawyers calim to be so much more educated than the rest of us, perhaps you should read up on your history of the origins of insurance companies. There were insurance companies before there were modern tort lawyers. Insurance was a concept that began a long time before the British legal system evolved and the American Legal system evolved. Insurance was pooled monies collected by a group who wanted to protect their interests regarding the possible total loss of goods due to unforeseen disasters while enroute to their destination by ship.
I am sorry to disappoint all the lawyers who got their panties in a bunch over my posts, but with LESS lawyers and LESS frivolous lawsuits, we insurance agents and brokers would still have jobs – and our E & O would probably cost us a hell of alot less, too!
As to the \”evil\” insurance companies screwing over insureds and doctors, how about all the doctors, dentists and hospitals that exaggerate their billing codes to inflate their insurance claim payments? Let\’s talk about that!
Here in Erie, PA, a young mother with an unemployed husband (he was in technical school)went to work in a local hospital here after moving here from Ohio. At this hospital, surgeons and doctors pressure the medical coders into falsifying the codes in order to effect more payments from insurance carriers (especially for workers comp and health insurance carriers). When she refused to \”play the game\” because of the risk of her possibly getting busted for insurance fraud, which is a felony in PA – punnishable by revocation of professional licenses, steep fines and a prison sentence, this girl found herself fired. Now Erie is somewhat of a small city, where all the local doctors, lawyers, CEO\’s and bank presidents hob-knob at the same exclusive dining club and yacht club. The hospital doing this is one of the region\’s last large employers. When this woman went to seek justice for the unfair loss of her job for refusing to commit what amounted to insurance fraud, unlike the rest of her department of medical coders, she was told by a young and conscientious lawyer that although she had a very strong and win-able case – both for wrongful termination AND insurance fraud, he was not willing to go up against the region\’s largest employer because he was afraid it would jeopardize his future and his career as a local lawyer.
Also, since this woman refused to \”play the game\”, she also found herself unoficially black-balled from any other comparable employment, except for maybe a crappy minimum wage job at Wal-Mart\’s. This lawyer confirmed this for her and it was affirmed by other lawyers in the area, none of whom would take her case and help her get some justice. So much for lawyers being out for the disenfranchised. This poor working mother nearly ended up homeless as a result of the loss of her job and being unable to get another job to support herself and her family. She and her infant son and husband (who had to drop school when they moved) had to try to start all over with no money in another state where she finally could get another job, all because of the lack of acess to justice afforded to this woman (and lack of justice afforded to the insurance carriers who were overbilled) – and a good ole boy network of greedy doctors, lawyers and a powerful and rich hospital executive. Meanwhile, insurance costs for individuals, groups and workers comp policies as a whole are higher than they would have to be if not for those seeking to get unjustly enriched by \”playing the game\” of insurance fraud. It happens more often than you think.
Second case: A local dentist is, and has been, getting away with false insurance claims for work (not) done on Medicaid patients, for several YEARS. I have it on reliable authority that he has submitted copies of his treatment plans to one of the local residential facilities for mentally handicapped residents, all who are on Medicaid and SSI. Yet, when several of the people who work at this facility checked some of their residents who were still complaining of toothaches, they found that this dentist had not drilled and filed the teeth as he claimed he did, both in his claims filed to Medicaid and also stated in the individual residents\’ treatment plans which this home keeps a record of. This dentist drives an $85K Hum-V and lives in a $500K home w/ an acre of lakefront property w/ private beach access. Since these types of cases would be morally right and just in pursuing, you would think that at least one lawyer would be ready to jump all over that hospital and the dentist, for the economic harm and medical harm they have caused respectively to the people involved. However, because these types of cases don\’t bring in big bucks in billable hours, and the lawyers hob-knob with the perpetrators of the aforementioned injustices, the aggrieved in each case were denied access to the legal system – justice had been denied. Now who do we blame for that – Milton Berle?
Jacqueline: I don\’t claim to be better educated or smarter than anyone else. In fact, I know lots of people who I think are a lot smarter than I am. If I was so bright, I wouldn\’t be handling medical negligence cases 31 years after the $250,000 MICRA cap was enacted by the State Legislature at the behest of the insurance industry and medical associations. Clearly, $250,000 in 1975 was worth a whole lot more then than it is now. In fact, it would have been possible to buy a mansion in Beverly Hills for that amount back then; it wouldn\’t purchase a median-priced home anywhere in the City today. Since 1975, the costs associated with litigation have skyrocketed, so it doesn\’t make a whole lot of financial sense to be representing people who have been injured by preventable medical mistakes – at least in California.
So, I\’m not claiming to be smarter than you are. I\’m just suggesting that, perhaps, attorneys are not the root of all evil, as you seem to suggest.
Certainly, there are people who take advantage of insurance – or try to. Anyone who defrauds an insurance company, should be held accountable for that. We can certainly agree on that.
If you don\’t think some insurance companies sometimes take advantage of their position of power to the economic disadvantage of their insureds, then we shall have to agree to disagree on that.
Not all lawyers are rich and/or greedy. Many of us do the work we do because it is enormously satisfying to help someone who is almost invariably at a disadvantage in the legal system. Helping others is what I do in my work and is why I also have been active in community service organizations for almost 20 years.
Wow, was this article linked on triallawyers.com? Were all of you rallied to comment?
The simple fact is this:
-Tort costs are skyrocketing.
-Legal defence costs are skyrocketing.
-Insurance companies are prohibited by insurance depts. from increasing their premiums to compensate.
Take a look at Med Mal. If it was such a profitable venture, where are all the players? Market exodus seems to be the story of the industry. The number of players has gone down substantially from even 7 years ago. Why? There simply are no profits!
If it truly was an issue of compensating victims, then why do plaintiff attornies go after parties not directly involved? Take the Rhode Island Night club fire? Who is being sued? Home Depot, among others. Why? They have the deeper pockets. This, in turn, increases insurer defence costs, because each named defendant has to spend defence money, even if they are not even remotely responsible.
Please, lawyers, don\’t tell me this is a victims\’ rights issue. It may not be a pure money grab like others say. But it surely is a lot worse than the trial lawyers lobby makes it out to be.
I am curious to know if the lawyers who make a living at the expense of the rest us working Americans can justify the costs we bear to subsidize their living standards. These run away defense costs are forcing our jobs out of the US,making us less competitive, and will result in a lower standard of living for our future generations.
This is my last comment. I am willing to concede that insurance defense costs are probably going up. The cost of everything goes up over time. And, insurance companies are litigating cases that previously would have been resolved at an earlier point in time by settlement than occurs now, which invariably means that there will be greater defense costs.
Frankly, I can\’t figure out why med mal insurance isn\’t profitable. It certainly should be, at least in California. There has been a $250,000 cap on non-ecoomic damages for 30 years. Economic losses track the increase in wages and health care. In addition to this cap, carriers which used to write medical malpractice policies for $5 and $10 million rarely offer more than $1 million in coverage. With the median-priced home in Los Angeles County now valued at almost a half million, the liability limit is ridiculously low.
So if, for example, if I represent a child who was severely brain damaged because the obstetrician who was called in by the hospital to perform an emergency C-section because the fetal monitor strip showed the baby was in trouble didn\’t arrive at the hospital for more than three hours because he was at dinner, the cost of care to that child over his or her lifetime will likely be in excess of $10 million.
The doctor only has a million dollars in coverage. Unless the doctor is also independently wealthy, most lawyers will make a policy limits demand to the defendant. That means the case will settle for the $1 million, if the doctor and the carrier agree to pay it. If they do not and the case goes to trial, the carrier will be on the hook for the entire verdict.
It is generally only when the insurance companies decide to roll the dice on a case with damages in excess of the insurance policy limit that it can get tagged for more than $1 million – at least in this state.
Furthermore, the number of medical negligence cases is falling – not, unfortunately, because there is less medical malpractice, but because the economics of these cases make less and less sense as time further erodes the value of the $250,000 cap. If a child dies because a nurse mistakenly gives him 100 times the dosage of medication ordered by a doctor, the most the family can recover is $250,000 – since that child has little or no economic \”value.\” Today, the costs paid to experts, court reporters, the filing fees and other costs associated with such a case can easily exceed $50k before trial and twice that amount if the case goes to trial. It\’s hard to justify putting $100,000 at risk when the most you can cover on behalf of the client is $250,000 – an amount, by the way, the carrier will never pay in settlement, since that\’s the most they could possibly lose at trial.
I tend to think insurance companies are making a profit in med mal. Most got into trouble because they were vying for market share during the \’90\’s, when their stock portfolios were performing so well. Prices were kept artificially low during that decade. When the stock market tanked, the insurers had to boost earnings and realized that this product was not priced appropriately. So, instead of raising rates 3-7% per year during the \’90\’s, the carriers raised rates 50-100% and declared a medical malpractice insurance crisis. We\’ve seen this all before – every time the stock market takes a dive.
Overall, insurance profits are up dramatically. I don\’t think we have to worry too much about the carriers or the agents who sell their products.
John said: \”Once again the insurance industry trots out its propaganda! Create a phony crisis, blame a particular group of people and then start taking people\’s civil rights. Where have I heard that before?\”
Today\’s headline: \”Jury Awards $6.5M to Panic Disorder Patient March 20, 2006
A health care case worker in Santa Rosa, Calif., who said he was denied a promotion because a panic disorder prevented him from meeting clients won $6.5 million in an employment discrimination lawsuit.\”
What happens is that trial lawyers write bad laws that they can profit from, like the ADA. Politicos on the take vote for these laws, then morons like this guy sue under them. Please tell us what this has to do with \”civil rights.\”
I think that when plaintiffs lose a lawsuit they should have to reimburse the defendants, and contingency fees should be illegal.
Insurance companies are not out to bilk the consumers. They simply try to figure out the expected amount of losses, add on enough to cover expenses and hopefully make a reasonable profit, like any other company on the planet.
Whenever you hear of insurers getting big rate increases, remember that insurance departments are continually fighting insurance companies to justify these rate changes. Sometimes insurers are denied the rate increases, and they have little recourse but to continue asking for them.
As for the whole tort litigation concept, while the lawyers are certainly doing their part to make a buck, don\’t forget behind each of these claims there is always an insured that either has a legitimate claim or is trying to bilk the system as well.
My my, aren\’t we all touchy? Perhaps we should all step back here and look at this unemotionally.
I have been in the insurance busienss for almost 32 years. I have seen crooked lawyers. Here in NY, the state even has a fund to compensate those who have been robbed by their attorneys. But crooked lawyers are not the issue.
I have seen crooked insurance brokers, but that again is not the issue.
The true issue is our civil justice system that enables, no ENCOURAGES, out of control litigation. Sometimes insurance covers this litigation, sometimes not. Perhaps one way to address this issue would be to change the system so that if a civil action were to fail, the losing plaintiff would then have to pay the cost\’s of the defendants. Then let\’s see how many people sue because they were burned by hot coffee (imagine the nerve, not to mention the negligence, of an eating establishment that serves hot coffee … HOT!).
Here in NY, the trial lawyers\’ lobby has a lot of power, probably more than the insurance industry\’s. NY has the so-called scaffold laws (201, 241) that are quite ridiculous . When you ask state legislators about them, they respond that the trial lawyers keep them in place, despite how crazy they are.
Most insurance agents (as well as many other professionals) have to practice defensive business methods to protect themselves from lawsuits, many of which are frivolous. A lot of the cost of medicine is related to extra, perhaps unecessay tests that are ordered for defensive reasons.
I got so frustrated over the years by what I considered to be lawyer driven frivolous law suits that I decided to join them, instead of fighting them. So, a number of years ago I began to specialize in insuring attorneys and law firms. I make money from insuring lawyers aainst lawsuits by OTHER attorneys. And you should should hear when lawyers get sued! They scream like stuck pigs. It\’s so gratifying.