A great opinion piece on what is actually happening as a result of tort reform. We voted on the admendment, which barely passed. Where I live(Galveston), we had a high turnout, which voted 63% against. Highest in the state.
MKC
Posted on Fri, Jun. 25, 2004
Are lawyers the real villains?
By John M. Cummings
Special to the Star-Telegram
It's tough being a plaintiff's lawyer these days.
Last year, the Texas Legislature pinned just about everything short of global warming on us. Maurice Greenberg, the billionaire CEO of AIG Insurance Company, recently called us "terrorists." The American Medical Association is being urged to give its blessing to physicians who decline to treat us and our families.
A nurse in Longview was fired from her job because she had the temerity to marry one of us. Our lawsuits are all "frivolous," and our jury verdicts are all "out of control." And now the local doctors also are out to get us, judging from Dr. Gary Cowan's June 18 essay, "Just what the doctor ordered?"
Cowan voiced the same frustration shared by many physicians: His medical malpractice insurance premiums continue to rise, despite promises that rates would drop with last year's passage of damage caps in Texas. As his rates go up, so does his bitterness toward plaintiff's lawyers.
His solution? Get rid of us instead of addressing the real reasons why insurance rates are climbing and what can be done about it.
To his credit, Cowan doesn't condone the outright killing of plaintiff's lawyers; rather, he advocates "just not intervening" when we might be trying to die. Apparently this will lead to fewer of us around to file lawsuits, which will in turn translate into lower malpractice insurance premiums for him and his colleagues.
Hippocrates must be spinning in his grave.
But let's set aside the doctor-vs.-lawyer rhetoric and look objectively at the problem. If Cowan would truly investigate who is behind his rising premiums, I suspect that insurance executives, lobbyists and certain Texas legislators would join plaintiff's lawyers on his "do not resuscitate" list.
Since damage caps became effective in September 2003, the number of medical negligence lawsuits filed in Texas has dropped dramatically. But in that same time, most of the malpractice insurers in the state have raised their rates.
G.E. Medical Protective, a company that insures 20 percent of the state's physicians, recently increased its rates by 10 percent and changed its products to avoid regulation by the Texas Department of Insurance. This was in response to the state's denial of its previous request to raise rates by 19 percent.
The Joint Underwriting Association asked for a 35 percent rate increase. The largest malpractice insurer in the state, TMLT, agreed to lower its rates by 12 percent, but it had raised its rates more than 100 percent in the previous two years.
Why? Because doctors and legislators are either unable or unwilling to stand up to the malpractice carriers and demand change.
With the backing of the Texas Medical Association, legislators could have required mandatory rate reductions in return for stripping away a patient's right to recover full damages. They did not.
They could have included a provision repealing the damage caps if rates did not decline. They did not.
They could have placed the insurance executives under oath and subject to the penalties of perjury before giving testimony about the true basis of the insurance crisis. They did not.
And so the plundering continues.
U.S. insurance companies saw their profits explode to almost $30 billion in 2003 -- a ten-fold increase from the previous year -- yet rates continue to rise. All the while, insurers avoid any real scrutiny or oversight. Instead, they count their money, impose frequent rate increases and chortle as the doctors and lawyers flog one another.
There are plenty of losers in the tort reform fight and the insurance crisis -- most notably the malpractice victims who can no longer recover their full damages and the good physicians who pay exorbitant rates. The only winners are the insurance companies and the legislators who so willingly do their bidding.
Killing all the plaintiff's lawyers will do nothing to change this.