Vested Interest - January 2003 Issue

The President’s Thoughts

"Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing."

Attributed to football coach, Red Sanders, 1953.

"Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is."

Vince Lombardi interview, 1962.

I apologize to Vince Lombardi. For as long as I can remember, I have attributed the first quotation to him. I never agreed with the sentiment expressed, and I found the idea in conflict with Lombardi’s overall coaching record and general personality. Red Sanders is someone I have never heard of, so he may have been some neanderthal coach who viewed the world in such a stark perspective. Lombardi’s quotation is more palatable and germane. I think most of us trial lawyers who have experienced both victory and defeat would agree that Lombardi’s exhortation is a critical factor in our being prepared to even enter the arena.

The manner that an individual or entity responds to victory often tells as much about character as the way a defeat is handled. As an Association, we have experienced recent victories. The redistricting map outcome in 2001 and the November 2002 elections are the most prime examples. Our testament to the future will be how we cultivate these victories. If we face a dilemma, it is how we balance bold and aggressive initiative with the danger of legislative avarice. The challenge is how to transform the elixir of future hindsight into the reality of the present. Many members have responded with legislative ideas in the past few months. I hope every member would feel free to call me or any member of the Executive Committee to discuss concepts and strategies. During the next several months, Jim Collins and I will be traveling across the state attending regional ITLA meetings. Please come and let us know your thoughts and ideas.

Even though we have some unique opportunities before us, our old bête noire of the insurance industry is revving up their engines for another full-scale assault on the legal justice system. ITLA has a wealth of information available to help you respond to local and national attacks. Please take up the mantle and respond to the misinformation that the insurance industry and its allies will be hoisting on your public now and in the months to come. On page 6, I have included a Letter to the Editor that was printed in September in the Chicago Sun Times responding to the "insurance crisis."

Robert J. Bingle, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association

Letter to the Editor, Chicago Sun-Times

Insurance propaganda

Dr. Lal’s September 18 letter, "Insurance puts squeeze on doctors" resonates with the same tired, unsubstantiated lament that lawyers and lawsuits are the root cause of a medical insurance crisis.

When Dr. Lal states that "doctors have faced insurance crises before," he is correct.

Volcanic eruptions in insurance premiums for doctors have occurred three times in the last 30 years ­ in the mid-1970s, again in the mid-1980s, and now today. The cause is always the same: a severe drop in investment income for insurers compounded by pricing errors in prior years.

This most recent crises can be directly related to ill-advised insurance company investments and a decade of short-sided price slashing designed to garner huge premium dollars. These practices led to industry losses of $3 billion dollars last year.

It certainly is a wonderful and unique industry that can lose $3 billion dollars in a year and then sit around a corporate table and solve this prodigious loss by two simple maneuvers: drastically raising medical insurance premiums for doctors who are trapped and must have the coverage, and blaming the new-found crisis on lawyers and lawsuits.

In fact, as a result of the last medical insurance crises, several states enacted significant restrictions on the jury system. However, there is a virtual absence of empirical evidence that supports a correlation between tort restrictions and the lowering of insurance rates or the expansion of insurance availability. The insurance industry has not cut and has no plans to cut insurance premiums as a consequence of tort restrictions. The American Insurance Association (AIA) and the American Tort Reform Association (ATRA) have already gone on record admitting this, with the AIA stating on March 13: "The insurance industry has never promised that tort reform would achieve specific premium savings."

The problem with most physicians is that they have always blindly bought into the insurance industry propaganda without demanding any factual accountability. Doctors, lawyers, and every other person are currently unable to control the cyclical premium increases hoisted on all of us by the unregulated insurance industry. The solution does not lie in weakening the jury system.

Here is a novel and certainly symbiotic solution: Doctors and lawyers should combine their efforts to demand regulation on the unfettered insurance industry. Perhaps then, we would see true reform, and we won’t have another "crisis" in 2012.

Robert J. Bingle, president
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association
Chicago Sun-Times, September 26, 2002