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Ok, this one is HILLARIOUS. It just looks at one year....and the insurance companies are on pace to make about a 13% return on surplus for 2004...and that is RECORD profits. Wow, that speaks volumes for just how bad of a run it has been for the industry if thier BEST year is that.
The attempted statistical abuse here is hillarious as it ignore rate of return and focuses on total dollars and GROWTH from 2003.
Right. Soooo HILARIOUS:
Angoff Report Reveals Record Profits for Malpractice Insurance Companies
The profitability of selling medical malpractice insurance has skyrocketed in recent years. Consequently, most malpractice insurance companies have routinely "over-reserved" (set aside more profit) than is necessary. These are among the findings of former Missouri Insurance Commissioner Jay Angoff, who recently analyzed the 2006 financial statements of the 15 largest medical malpractice insurance companies in the U.S., and issued a report entitled, "No Basis for High Insurance Rates: An Analysis of the 15 Largest Medical Malpractice Insurers' 2006 Financial Statements."
According to the Angoff Report, the 15 largest insurers paid out an average of 31.4 cents in claims for every dollar they collected in 2006. That means that for every $1 that a hospital or health care provider paid in insurance premiums, insurance companies were able to keep 68.6 cents, using that money to fund, "...executive salaries, marketing and advertising, and lawyers and lobbyists," among other things. What the companies didn't spend on those things, they continued to hold in reserve.
Further, the report notes that over the last three years, the economic losses of the 15 largest insurers fell by 50%, even as many publicly claimed that their losses were increasing.
The report comes at a time when physicians and other health care providers are decrying the prohibitive cost of malpractice insurance, and while health care costs in the U.S. continue to rise exponentially. The Angoff Report shows, among other things, the flawed logic underpinning current tort reform measures, and illustrates the critical need for better regulation of the insurance industry.
Exactly, you get your information from websites run by lobbying organizations for trial lawyers. Fair and balanced stuff there.
Don't attack the source until you can find me reports of insurance company earnings SUFFERING as a direct result of MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CLAIMS (and not, ya know, bad investments, etc.) Oh, and maybe a story or two of insurance company CEOs having to take devastating salary cuts because their companies are going broke!
If not the ABA, then the individual state bars, which are VERY strict in weeding out the bad guys.
Not exactly. In fact, exactly the opposite. State bars (including Florida's, which has the reputation of being one of the toughest in the country) operate to protect the interests of their members -- namely, lawyers. They do so in various ways, including the ridiculously aggressive promotion and pursuit of Unauthorized Practice of Law prosecutions against perfectly well qualified paralegals, i.e., the very same people who do the very same work when it is done in lawyer's office, except at ten times the cost to the consumer. State bar disciplinary systems are typically staffed by overwhelming majorities of -- lawyers -- who are most reluctant to resort to any penalty at all except in the most egregious of cases. In the review period 2002-05, for instance, sanction of any sort was imposed by the Florida Bar in 3% of cases brought before it. In an anecdotal case, it took them four years to disbar Louis 'King of Torts' Robles of Miami, who had merely stolen $13 million from his elderly clients in mass asbestos cases.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
Oh, AND the state bar, at least in Florida, operates a "recovery fund" for clients who have been taken by shoddy lawyers.
Perhaps you could link to some info on that. There is no mention of it on the floridabar.org site. There is prominent mention of how time-consuming and costly legal malpractice cases can be for the plaintiff, even for one who is eventually victorious.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TriMT7
"4.7 percent of doctors are responsible for 51.4 percent for all malpractice payments"
Yes, that was the figure in Pennsylvania, and similar could be found elsewhere. Per the earlier, state boards could be much more energetic in assuring that repeat offenders are at least limited in the scope of their practices, and much more cooperative in assuring that those losing their license in one state do not simply U-Haul it over the border to set up shop in the next state. That said, there is every reason to believe that suspicious looking numbers will result from even a perfect system of professional medical regulation, in that some specialties, and some aspects within such specialties, are simply more prone to claims of (and hence potential convictions for) malpractice than are others. Some reasoned latitude must be granted on this account.
Yes, it was a serious question. Unfortunately I don't get my information from right wing blogs, so I wasn't aware that they frequently discussed it.
You wouldn't have needed to consult a blog. Simply listening to the President and his craven henchman seeking to advance their entirely anti-consumer tort reform proposals would have covered it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnbound2day
Thank you for the answer. Now, I simply wonder if the same type of system would work in America with lawsuits being changed to something more like comp/claim system.
The applicability of the post-2002 French model in this country is a hypothetical, but other than overcoming the simple momentum of the existing system, I would not know of any a priori reason why it wouldn't or couldn't work here.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tnbound2day
While I wouldn't say that actual lawsuit amounts in America are a primary issue, I would say they are a secondary issue and do have some relevance. The problem is the amount doctors have to pay to cover their butt with insurance and the associated cost that drive the cost of owning a family practice way up. And yes, many of them are paying really high malpractice insurance due to a small number of bad apples. I happen to know a doctor that dropped his practice and became a sales manager for a company I worked with because when it was all said and done he made more per hour average with far less headaches by being a sales manager. He had many med school friends who had done the same.
There were many physicians who dropped out of practice over malpractice insurance rate issues in the earliest years of the century, but those issues resulted in substantial part from a rapidly declining stock market that undercut the value of insurance company reserves and from the withdrawal of the St. Paul companies from the malpractice field on account of being unable to sustain claims-to-premiums ratios that were on the order of 115%. The resulting regional monopolistic marketing vacuums were taken advantage of by remaining underwriters. Particularly small-shop medical providers were thus often caught in a double-bind. There is meanwhile no signficant relationship between jury verdicts and malpractice premiums, and no evidence that either the number or the total value of actual awards resulting from recent malpractice jury verdicts has materially changed or has been any meaningful driver of malpractice insurance rate increases.
Angoff Report Reveals Record Profits for Malpractice Insurance Companies
The profitability of selling medical malpractice insurance has skyrocketed in recent years. Consequently, most malpractice insurance companies have routinely "over-reserved" (set aside more profit) than is necessary. These are among the findings of former Missouri Insurance Commissioner Jay Angoff, who recently analyzed the 2006 financial statements of the 15 largest medical malpractice insurance companies in the U.S., and issued a report entitled, "No Basis for High Insurance Rates: An Analysis of the 15 Largest Medical Malpractice Insurers' 2006 Financial Statements."
According to the Angoff Report, the 15 largest insurers paid out an average of 31.4 cents in claims for every dollar they collected in 2006. That means that for every $1 that a hospital or health care provider paid in insurance premiums, insurance companies were able to keep 68.6 cents, using that money to fund, "...executive salaries, marketing and advertising, and lawyers and lobbyists," among other things. What the companies didn't spend on those things, they continued to hold in reserve.
Further, the report notes that over the last three years, the economic losses of the 15 largest insurers fell by 50%, even as many publicly claimed that their losses were increasing.
The report comes at a time when physicians and other health care providers are decrying the prohibitive cost of malpractice insurance, and while health care costs in the U.S. continue to rise exponentially. The Angoff Report shows, among other things, the flawed logic underpinning current tort reform measures, and illustrates the critical need for better regulation of the insurance industry.
Don't attack the source until you can find me reports of insurance company earnings SUFFERING as a direct result of MEDICAL MALPRACTICE CLAIMS (and not, ya know, bad investments, etc.) Oh, and maybe a story or two of insurance company CEOs having to take devastating salary cuts because their companies are going broke!
The Angoff reports are a laughing stock in the actuarial community.
Angoff was on the payroll of the trial lawyers at the time of writing that.
The report has been discredited by pretty much everyone, including the NAIC.
You basically rolled out the equivalent of the tobacco lobby's "scientists" finding that smoking isn't harmful.
You've been had buddy.
P.S. Also discredited by the American Academy of Actuaries....
The Angoff reports are a laughing stock in the actuarial community.
Oh, wow. The "actuarial community" disagrees! Imagine that!!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mathguy
You basically rolled out the equivalent of the tobacco lobby's "scientists" finding that smoking isn't harmful.
You've been had buddy.
P.S. Also discredited by the American Academy of Actuaries....
You're kidding me, right? You're example of a report being "discredited" by the Actuary Community is like a global warming report being "discredited" by an energy company!
Insurance Companies Post Record Profits 10 years after Tort Reform:
Ten years after so-called “tort reform” legislation, insurance companies that offer property, liability and casualty coverage are reporting record profits for 2005.
The tort reform movement in Texas successfully limited the damages that individuals could win by bringing civil suits or “torts” against corporations. In 1995, the Texas Legislature capped the payments on suffering, mental anguish and non-economic damages at $250,000 per provider per defendant. Injured individuals are still allowed full compensation for “actual damages,” such as the cost of ongoing medical treatment or the loss of income.
U.S. property and casualty industry recorded an underwriting profit of $15.1 billion for the first six months of 2006, a 31.8 percent increase over the first half of 2005, according to a September insurance industry report from AM Best.
“In recent years the insurance industry's profits have grown exponentially in comparison to the past three decades,” said Ruth Widdoes, branch manager with A-Affordable Insurance Co.
Despite near-record losses from hurricanes along the Texas Gulf Coast during 2005, the property and casualty insurance industry registered a $121 billion increase in total assets during the year. In fact, industry assets increased 9.4 percent in each of the last two years.
By comparison, insurance industry investments in bonds rose 7.5 percent and its stock investments increased 10.5 percent in 2005 – suggesting that most of the asset growth came from retained earnings rather than from investments. The industry is legally required to hold reserves and to place part of its assets in investments outside the industry to guarantee its ability to pay claims....
And, what exactly am I supposed to garner from this but more evidence of shoddily run business plans?:
From your link:
PHICO collapsed after it expanded across the nation. Now consumers are paying the tab.
PHICO's implosion showed that allegedly risky and negligent insurance business decisions also have contributed significantly to the crisis.
PHICO's failure also raises questions about the state's role in regulating the $58 billion insurance industry in Pennsylvania. The industry's interests so permeate state government — where the top regulators are insurance executives, and some legislators on insurance committees work in the industry they regulate — that some believe even-handed regulation is impossible.
With its rapid decline, allegedly falsified financial reports and heavy costs to the public, PHICO calls to mind another recent corporate collapse.
''There are, just like Enron, supposed to be traps in place to prevent things like this,'' said state Rep. T.J. Rooney, D-Lehigh/Northampton, a member of the House Insurance Committee.
''PHICO didn't get in trouble last week. This is a slope they had been headed down for a while.''
As in the Enron debacle, PHICO's failure swamped many in its wake. Unlike the Enron case, however, lawmakers aren't scrambling to root out the cause and pass laws to prevent a recurrence.
Risky insurance company move also fuels Pa. malpractice crisis -- themorningcall.com
I have to admit that I was treated by a doctor in Aix-en-Provence last year and I ended up paying him 20 euros (cash) and 13 euros to the drugstore around the corner for my medication. The whole thing took about 20 minutes, and I was well in 18 hours. No card, no forms to fill out, no obese receptionists, no problem. I don't know if that was a typical experience, but I have a feeling that it was.
We waste a lot of time and hassle in the US just going through the motions of obtaining care. Now whether that would improve or get worse with a single-payer system, I leave to wiser heads than mine.
You are posting articles and *sources* from blogs, trial lawyer lobbying groups and other paid representatives for trial lawyers.
You've ignored every place I've agreed with you.
You've ignored the fact that I used your own cited numbers showing the 2004 record profit was just a whopping 13%.
I just found it ironic that you were on the guy about getting his info from "right wing blogs" when your sources are utter garbage.
Dude, you should really look into joining the Olympics. The length you jump to reach conclusions would easily shatter world records.
I posted the info after an article from very liberal Yahoo I was reading had a link to it. I found it intriguing and thought it might bring up some interesting points. I feel that France is a country run far differently from America and I get tired of people saying we should do our healthcare like the French. Not to long ago I posted an article from BBC that was covering a lot of the failures of the French system.
I didn't say hell no we should never do it, or hell yes lets dive in head first.
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