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...

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...

Steadily increasing competition has changed the underwriting environment in most life insurance companies. This article attempts to explore how heightened competition presents a new challenge for medical professionals employed in the industry.

The real crisis presented by the breakdown of our medical malpractice litigation and insurance system is that the wrong people are getting most of the money. Often, the people who sue have substantial injuries but dubious liability claims, while many people with legitimate claims can't even assert them. As a result, many doctors are angry and resentful toward patients who bring frivolous claims...

Little is known about how generosity of insurance and population characteristics affect quantity or appropriateness of antibiotic use. Using insurance claims for antibiotics from 5765 non-elderly people who lived in six sites in the United States and were randomly assigned to insurance plans varying by level of cost-sharing, we describe how antibiotic use varies by insurance plan, diagnosis and...

P olicies aimed at reducing inequalities in the healthcare domain in France tend to be focused on access to healthcare, either by extending Statutory Health Insurance coverage (Universal Health Insurance Coverage (CMU) known as "basic" coverage, and State Medical Aid (AME), or by extending complementary health insurance coverage (complementary CMU and financial assistance for the acquisition of...

Background Health insurance has been acknowledged by researchers as a valuable tool in health financing. In spite of its significance, a subscription paralysis has been observed in India for this product. People who can afford health insurance are also found to be either ignorant or aversive towards it. This study is designed to investigate into the socio-economic factors, individuals’ health i...

This section describes how I convert the cost sharing formula in Table 1 into actual monthly outof-pocket health expenditures in Table 2. Ideally, I would like to have access to information on actual out-of-pocket expenditures at the individual level (like Medical Expenditure Panel Survey in the US). In the absence of such data, I attempt to derive the same. Fortunately, I know the exact formul...

There is much debate not only about the morality of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) but also about how they should be classified. Should ART be understood as medical treatment for a disease (infertility) or should they be relegated to boutique medicine where they are seen as elective? How we answer this question affects our thoughts about whether ART should be covered by insurance comp...