A colleague of mine who practises OB/GYN in NYC has told me that there is a proposal in the NY state assembly to allow insurers to raise malpractise insurance rates for those who practise obstetrics. They will vote on this soon - and OB’s are planning a strike with a trip to Albany (some MD’s at each hospital have agreed to stay back and take care of emergencies) to protest this. The insurance lobby as well as the trial lawyers lobby are both very strong in the state - and their are rumours of bribery going on within the state government (most of suspicion is on Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the assembly who is a retired personal injury lawyer). The insurers claim that there have been many very large settlements in personal injury and malpractise suits and they have lost money. What they fail to emphasize is that insurance companies make most of their money by investing the premiums they collect. I am sure they have been soaked like the rest of country with the whole subprime mortgage mess (CDO’s for example). This is likley contributing to their loses as much as the payouts. How to help the poor insurance companies? Allow them to raise the YEARLY premiums for OB’s by over 70,000.00$!!!! They already pay amongst the highest rates in the nation (in many cases over 100,000K/year). This will accomplish two things. A. OB’s will have to raise their rates (and stop accepting insurance) unless they are salaried employees in state/city- sponsored hospitals where they don’t pay their premiums out of pocket. Or they will have to increase their patient loads to unbearble levels (aren’t they allowed to ever sleep or see their families?). B. They will stop practising OB and either move to another state or just do GYN (and vulvoplasty and other cosmetic GYN nonsense). Who will suffer? Patients. They will have to struggle to find someone or go to already crowed city hospitals if they can’t afford a private MD who does not accept insurance.
Doctors seem to be finally realising that they need to work as a group - not as individuals if they want to affect change in our government. Clearly tort reform needs to happen in NY. It already has in 38 other states!!!!
Canadian Pharmacy
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you.
Allen Taylor
I read somewhere that awhile back 1 in 4 OB patients on the Mexico/TX border sued.
If you saw 10 patients a day, at least 2 would sue you.
They wonder why no one wants to be a damn OB doc anymore.
We have a problem like this in Oregon. We’ve lost quite a few OB docs statewide. My county has 2 OB docs only. It’s a scary situation.
NY’s med mal insurers invested the money in T-bills, bonds and other fixed rate securities. There is no sub-prime exposure. Blaming the stock market and the sub-prime mess for the lack of insurance company reserves is sheer nonsense. Truth be told, the malpractice mess in NY is the responsibility of State Government malfeasance, compounded by the blatant conflict of interest of the Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver. For more info on Silver, look here:
http://www.nypost.com/seven/03012008/news/nationalnews/silver__conflict__what_conflict__99903.htm
Yes, Silver makes me nauseated. He just gave some state appointment to someone is his personal injury law firm - but claims there is “no conflict of interest”. Yeah, right.
I think if you looked into big insurance firms they would have some money in the the mortgage market. They buy into lots of things beside bonds and fed debt. And loses from the non-malpractice side could be in play here too.
I live in Texas and I believe the OBs on the border are the most sued in the nation and they are fleeing the specialty. Several factors come into play. Rapidly growing population with lots of recent immigrants. A lot of them live in outlying unregulated development areas with little to no running water and sewage. Housing by US standards is abysmal thus they contribute little to the tax base. The border counties until you get into the Rio Grande Valley are HUGE so they have a greater ratio of infrastructure per capital to support (mainly roads/bridges). Not to mention the bulk of the money will get spent in the more developed areas of the county (thats where the active voters will be).
I think tort reform CAN go too far though. Texas limits the damages to $250K. If I go in to have say my right leg removed and you leave me the bad right one and cut off my good left one I do not think I would find that very equitable.
I read an article last year about Michigan experiencing the same problem with OB-GYNs leaving the state because of the high cost of malpractice insurance.
One problem seems to be the likelihood of a lay jury feeling sympathy for the patient, regardless of the medical facts of the case. Cutting off the wrong leg is one thing, but what about cases where the patient received excellent medical care, or a minor mistake was irrelevant to a bad outcome? I wonder how much money is spent on illegitimate malpractice cases?