Vested Interest - November 2003 Issue

The President’s Thoughts

Over the last ten months a national debate has raged over the rising cost of medical malpractice insurance premiums and its purported adverse influence on access to health care. Leading the charge has been the American Medical Association, who claims that escalating costs of medical malpractice insurance are increasing health care costs to the public and forcing doctors in many states to move or close their practices. However, a recently released report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that this claim is largely unsubstantiated. In its study, the GAO examined several issues concerning recent spikes in medical malpractice insurance premiums, including how health care provider responses to rising premiums have affected access to health care and whether physicians are actually practicing defensive medicine. After an extensive investigation, the GAO determined that although many physicians claimed that they were relocating their practices or retiring early because of rising medical malpractice premiums, those claims were not substantiated and certainly did not affect access to health care on a widespread basis. Even in those circumstances where physicians curtailed some high-risk services, the GAO did not find access to these services widely affected. Further, the GAO determined that the American Medical Association’s long-claimed adverse impact on the overall cost of health care based upon defensive medicine practices was also unsubstantiated.

Recent local events have fanned the flames of the debate concerning access to healthcare. In the last 60 days, newspapers in the metro-east area (Madison and St. Clair counties) have been reporting that up to 50 physicians in those counties have either relocated their practices or retired from the practice of medicine because of high malpractice insurance premiums or the inability to get malpractice insurance at all. Most notably a group of cardiothoracic surgeons and another group of neurosurgeons were denied coverage from their insurance provider, Medical Protective Insurance Company of Fort Wayne, Indiana. In an interview provided to the Belleville News-Democrat, MedPro spokesman, John Novarian, blamed higher-than-normal malpractice awards in St. Clair and Madison Counties for the overall increased cost of insurance. However, a close look at reported settlements and verdicts in the St. Clair and Madison County area flies in the face of this argument. Over the last eight years there have been a grand total of four plaintiffs’ verdicts in medical malpractice cases in Madison County, totaling $4,629,000. Not one of those verdicts was against a vascular or cardiac surgeon – the same doctors who are being denied coverage now. In St. Clair County, there have been two plaintiffs’ medical malpractice verdicts in the last eight years, neither of which exceeded $1 million. According to the Chicago Lawyer’s Settlement Survey, 2002 Edition, none of the top 20 downstate settlements in medical malpractice cases occurred in either Madison or St. Clair County. These statistics raise a significant question as to the truthfulness of MedPro’s claims.

I have given several interviews to reporters for the Belleville News-Democrat and other papers in the metro-east area explaining that the numbers on settlements and verdicts hardly justify significant premium increases and have recommended that those reporters dig deeper by questioning MedPro’s underwriting practices. Not surprisingly, they have had little luck in getting MedPro to respond in a meaningful fashion. It’s important for our membership to be engaged in this debate and I would strongly recommend that if you practice in the metro-east area, you write letters to your local newspapers highlighting the paucity of significant medical malpractice verdicts and settlements from these two counties. This debate is far from over. Stay tuned.

Michael P. Schostok, President
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association