News Briefs

Independent Reviewers Expose Bogus Insurance Study

Last July ISMIE Mutual refuted a misleading and flawed report, Falling Claims and Rising Premiums in the Medical Malpractice Insurance Industry, by Jay Angoff, an attorney from Jefferson City, Mo. The report was commissioned by the Center for Justice and Democracy. Since then, two independent analyses also have lambasted the findings.

A report by Towers Perrin, released by the Physician Insurers Association of America (PIAA), thoroughly debunked Angoff’s assertion that medical liability insurers – including ISMIE Mutual – have been “making huge profits.” More recently the American Academy of Actuaries characterized the report as “incomplete, actuarially unsound, and misleading.”

Read ISMIE Mutual’s statement. The Towers Perrin study and related PIAA press release may be found at www.thepiaa.org. Go to www.actuary.org to read the American Academy of Actuaries news release and statement.

Crunching the crisis numbers

2 – Illinois’ nationwide rank for average claims payment for physicians ($494,857) in 2003. Hawaii was #1 with $501,161; Utah was in last place with $125,954.
Source: www.statehealthfacts.org

4 – Number of states in which caps on noneconomic damage awards were found to be unconstitutional (Alabama, in 1996; New Hampshire, in 1991; Oregon, in 1999 and Wisconsin, in 2005).
Source: American Medical Association

20 – Number of AMA “crisis states,” up from 12 in 2002. Includes Illinois, which won’t be taken off the list until the state’s 2005 reform legislation effectively halts the crisis. (Texas, which enacted reform laws in 2003, recently lost its crisis-state designation; Rhode Island is the most recent state named to the crisis list.)
Source: American Medical Association

29 – Number of states that currently have laws limiting non-economic damages in medical liability actions.
Source: American Medical Association