Medical Malpractice Insurance: Protecting Patients and Healthcare Professionals

Liability and liability insurance for medical malpractice.

Physicians typically carry virtually complete malpractice insurance coverage. This contradicts standard theoretical predictions that under a negligence rule of liability there should be no demand for insurance, and insurance policies under moral hazard will contain co-payment provisions. It is argued that judicial 'errors' in defining negligence generate a demand for liability and legal defense...

Medical Malpractice and the Insurance Underwriting Cycle

Tort law and medical malpractice insurance premiums.

This paper estimated the effects of tort law and insurer investment returns on physician malpractice insurance premiums. Data were collected on tort law from 1991 through 2004, and multivariate regression models, including fixed effects for state and year, were used to estimate the effect of changes in tort law on medical malpractice premiums. The premium consequences of national policy changes...

Medical Malpractice Insurance and the Emperor’s Clothes

Tenured academics are not known for their firm grasp of reality. Medical malpractice policy seems to be an exception. In the thirty years that have passed since California adopted its paradigmatic malpractice reform legislation, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA),1 the health care system has changed dramatically. Annual spending on health care in the United States has ri...

Understanding medical malpractice insurance: a primer.

As the policy debate over the medical malpractice insurance crisis continues, dueling claims about its causes and suggestions for policy solutions have highlighted the need for a better understanding of how medical malpractice insurance works, why premiums change and what can be done about it. This primer on malpractice insurance discusses these issues and also analyzes the causes of and potent...