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Hello...Goodbye...Hello?! |
Lately there are some "new" players in town, aggressively pursuing physician med mal insurance business in Illinois. Funny thing though...some of them look an awful lot like the "old" players – large, commercial insurance companies that left Illinois physicians in the lurch back in 1976!
Hmmm . . . let’s see. . . . there’s St. Paul, which earlier this year signed on the dotted line to purchase MMI, a med mal insurer primarily of hospitals and hospital-employed physicians. That’s right. . . . they’re the ones who were a big part of the medical malpractice crisis back in 1976. They came back for awhile in the early 1980’s, making a strong push to write new business at attractive rates. That was followed a few years later by adopting a six-month policy form – and taking successive six-month increases in the 60% range.
Oh, and there’s Medical Protective which stayed in the Illinois market back in 1976 – they just made their terms of insurance so undesirable, both in terms of liability limits and premium rates, that they might as well have left.
Funny, these actions were the very reason that ISMIE was founded in the first place!