PRESS RELEASE

Illinois Trial Lawyers Association: One Year After Civil Justice Restriction Became Law, Insurance Premiums for Illinois Doctors Continue to Rise

Special Interest Giveaway to Big Insurance Companies Limits the Rights of Victims

Springfield, IL - Judy L. Cates, President of the Illinois Trial Lawyers Association, released the following statement today on the one-year anniversary of the enactment of Illinois’s medical malpractice law (PA 94-677).

“One year after the Illinois legislature passed a civil justice restriction that would limit the ability of victims to hold hospitals and health care workers accountable for negligence, the law has done nothing to decrease premiums for doctors and everything to increase the insurance industry’s already bloated bottom line.

“Limiting what an Illinois patient, injured through no fault of their own, can seek from a negligent health care worker or hospital is unfair – the arbitrary, one-size-fits-all approach ignores the degree of negligence or harm inflicted on the patient. Politicians should not be making decisions as to what an injury is worth.

“The civil justice system is many times the last resort for victims of medical negligence - with hundreds of thousands of people dying each year from medical errors, eliminating the right of victims to hold negligent health care workers and hospitals accountable leaves them with no avenue to seek justice and get the care they need and deserve.”

Below are the facts:

After this law went into effect last year, ISMIE – the state’s largest medical insurer – increased insurance rates for many doctors.1

These rates increased despite the fact that according to ISMIE’s own estimates, it will pay out 20% less from 2005 claims than 2004 claims2 and despite the fact that ISMIE’S net income more than doubled from 2004 to 2005, from $11.5 to $23.6 million.3

In short, the law, which was supposed to help physicians, has benefited only the insurance companies. Since this law was passed, only two things have happened:

• ISMIE's income and doctors insurance rates have increased.



• Illinois citizens have lost their right to full and fair compensation determined by a jury and their right to hold bad doctors and hospitals accountable even where there is gross medical negligence.

Caps Don’t Work

Nearly one year after PA 94-677 was signed to cap noneconomic damages in medical malpractice cases, injured patients in Illinois are learning what medical malpractice insurance companies and injured patients in California, Texas and several other states already know: Caps don’t work.

• Malpractice premiums in states with caps on noneconomic damages are 12.4 percent higher than in states without caps.4



• In the five states that recently passed medical malpractice caps (Mississippi, Nevada, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas), premiums rose at nearly double the rate as states that did not pass a damage cap.5



• In September 2003, Texas passed Proposition 12, which capped noneconomic damages at $250,000 in medical malpractice cases. The decision followed an intense campaign in which the Texas insurance commissioner, Jose Montemayor claimed that caps would cause insurers to reduce rates by 19 percent. However, just two months later in November 2003, major malpractice insurers requested rate hikes of 35 percent for doctors and 65 percent for hospitals, despite campaign promises that caps would lower rates.6



• In a document filed by GE Medical Protective to the Texas Department of Insurance and obtained by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, the company admits that “capping non-economic damages will show a loss savings of 1.0%.”7



• In the 13 years after California passed the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) that capped noneconomic damages at $250,000, physicians saw their malpractice premiums rise 450 percent. Rates did not stabilize until the 1988 passage of Proposition 103, an insurance reform initiative that lowered doctors’ premiums 20 percent in the first three years after its enactment.8

Endnotes