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 21% Growth in
Insurance Profits
According to a study for the Insurance Services Office,
profits at U.S. property and casualty insurers such as American International Group Inc.
and Allstate Corp. rose an average of 21 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier,
a level that suggests rate increases now might...
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Lawsuits not the
Cause of Rising Malpractice Premiums
A study published by Weiss Ratings (www.weissratings.com) an
independent insurance-rating agency in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, found that between
1991 and 2002, states with caps on noneconomic damage awards saw median doctors
malpractice insurance premiums...
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Dear Senator Frist:
We write to express our concern over the conflict-of-interest
presented by your support for legislation that would impose a cap on medical malpractice
awards, and your personal financial interest in companies that will profit from limits on
medical liability - both HCA, the largest for-profit hospital company and one of the
largest purveyors of medical negligence in America...
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Doctor's testimony
under scrutiny
Feeling under siege by malpractice lawsuits, medical
societies are setting up tribunals to review the testimony of doctors who act as expert
witnesses in such lawsuits. Doctors whose testimony does not pass muster can be suspended
or expelled from the societies. Lawyers who represent plaintiffs... Click here for complete article
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White
House-supported legislation to limit damage awards - Blocked
Senate Democrats blocked White House-supported legislation to
limit damage awards in medical malpractice lawsuits, probably dooming the initiative in
the 108th Congress but ensuring it a prominent role in next year's campaigns. The largely
party-line vote was 49 to 48 in favor of...
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Nurses Shortage
Costs Lives
Americans scheduled for routine surgery, such as a knee
replacement run a 31 percent greater risk of dying if they are admitted to a hospital with
a severe shortage of nurses, a study says. An estimated 20,000 people die each year
because they have checked into a hospital with overworked nurses, says a study in the Journal
of the American Medical Association. That's about a fifth of the roughly 98,000
deaths attributed each year to medical errors in the U.S. (Source - ATLA L@w
News Digest - October 24, 2002)
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Use a Web Site to
Check on Nursing Home Care!
The nursing home community of patients, families, providers
and caregivers have an unprecedented opportunity to participate in a new reporting and
quality improvement program called the Nursing Home Quality Initiative, which the Federal
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has rolled out nationally.
The program has the purpose of improving the quality of care
in nursing facilities and providing information to consumers.
Quality information can be found on the web site for the
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services - Nursing Home Compare
Section and is based on eight conditions or measures, for patients.
The primary purpose of this tool is to provide detailed
information about the past performance of every Medicare and Medicaid certified nursing
home in the country.
The American Health Care Association is an active supporter
of this new initiative. (ACHA is the nation's largest membership organization of
long-term-care providers with nearly 12,000 member facilities).
This Nursing Home Quality Initiative signals a new focus to
improve care in nursing facilities, and along with visits to facilities, it provides
consumers with another tool in the process of evaluating care and selecting a quality
nursing facility for themselves or a loved one. Consumers can find more information for
the quality measures on the Nursing Home Quality Initiative Page
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Serious Health Risks Posed by
Lack of Nurses
A new study shows that inadequate nursing care can cause
devastating problems for patients. But it is surprisingly difficult for most people to get
basic information about nursing levels at individual hospitals. When there are too few registered nurses at bedsides, patients are
significantly more likely to... Click here for complete
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Property/Casualty Insurers Incur Losses of $7.9 Billion
in 2001
Property/casualty insurers reported losses of
$7.9 billion in 2001, the first time they have ever reported a calendar-year loss. They
reported profits of $20.6 billion in 2000. Their losses from the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks totaled $10 billion, but they are expected to post additional losses from those
attacks in 2002. Other reasons for the drop were the economic downturn, underpricing,
catastrophic losses, medical cost inflation, Enron and legal costs. (Source - Liberty & Insurance Week April 22, 2002Liberty & Insurance Week April 22, 2002)
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The
Truth About Medical Malpractice
Skyrocketing medical malpractice insurance premiums...
Doctors abandoning their practices.... The insurance industry wants the public to think
these trends are the result of "frivolous" lawsuits and
"out-of-control" injuries and medical care providers are only too happy to
agree. But what's the real story?... Click here for complete article
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Support Grows For Cameras In Care
Facilities
For years, the long-term care industry has largely managed to
block the use of "granny cams", video-surveillance cameras that families
sometimes use to watch over elderly or disabled residents in nursing homes or other
facilities. There are no laws against such cameras. But many nursing-home owners, as well
as employees and insurers, discourage their use on the grounds that they are an invasion
of privacy.
Yet granny cams are starting to get lawmakers' attention. At
a Senate hearing Monday, Michael Peters, an Orlando, Fla. attorney who represents
nursing-home residents, testified that cameras would potentially eliminate abuse and
neglect. If employees knew that they were being watched. Meanwhile, legislators in at
least a dozen states are trying to make it easier for families to install cameras. Texas
enacted a law spelling out families surveillance rights last summer.
Many lawmakers who support cameras do so after personal
experience with nursing homes. (Source - Wall Street Journal 03/07/02)
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Health
Care Spending up 7.2% - Biggest increase in decade
Health care spending jumped
7.2 percent last year - the largest increase in 10 years, a nonpartisan research group
announced. Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, said
health care spending has been steadily increasing for three decades, but the annual
increases in the mid-1990's were under 2 percent and caused primarily by increases in drug
costs. Last year, hospital spending was the major reason for the large increase. Inpatient
hospital spending increased 2.8 percent in 2000, compared to 1.6 percent in 1999, and
outpatient spending increased 11.2 percent, compared to 8.9 percent in 1999. For the first
time in seven years, from 18.4 percent in 1999 to 14.5 percent in 2000, but still
accounted for 27 percent of the over increase. (Liability & Insurance Week -
October 1, 2001)
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Publisher's
Clearinghouse Settles for $34 Million
Publisher's Clearinghouse has
agreed to pay $34 million to 26 states to settle lawsuits charging that it had
deliberately misled consumers into believing they had won or could increase their chances
of winning a sweepstakes by buying magazine subscriptions or other goods. PCH
admitted no wrongdoing but acknowledged there were "some consumers who may have been
confused, but any confusion was certainly not intentional or deliberate." The
settlement includes $1 million in civil penalties and $13 million for investigative and
legal fees. (Liability & Insurance Week - July 2, 2001)
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Study's
verdict: Jury awards not out of control
Critics of the civil justice system have argued for years
that reform is needed because of runaway punitive damage verdicts by juries. But a
comprehensive study of nearly 9,000 trials across the country has found that judges award
punitive damages about as often as juries and generally in about the same proportions.
The study, believed to be one of the largest of
punitive damages awards, challenges widely held ideas about jurors' decisions that have
influenced state judges, legislators, Congress and even the United States Supreme Court.
A draft of the study provided by the authors, said that judges and juries each
awarded punitive damages in about the same percentage of the cases in which plaintiffs
won.
The study, to be published in March in the
Cornell Law Review, analyzed court statistics on 8,724 trials in 45 large trial courts
across the country. It was conducted by two Cornell professors, Theodore Eisenberg
and Martin T. Wells, and three analysts from the National Center for State Courts, and
independent research group from Williamsburg, Va.
"By showing that judges and juries
generally have similar views in punitive damages, the study suggested that juries may be
far less arbitrary than was widely believed." said Neil Vidmar, authority on jury
issues at Duke Law School, who was not involved in the Cornell research, but was familiar
with it.
"It is novel," Vidmar said.
"because the conventional wisdom is juries are irresponsible, incompetent and don't
know how to make an assessment." In an interview, Eisenberg of Cornell Law
School, an author of the new study said its importance was that it was based on a broad
sample of actual cases, not on hypothetical cases. He said policy makers around the
country have been making decisions about restricting the powers of injuries that were not
based on fact.
"We find no evidence of their punitive
damage awards being different than what judges do," he said.
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You may need personal injury lawyers to protect your
rights! Where a more serious and/or permanent injury has been sustained, an
individual who does not have the training and experience in personal injury law, is not on
an even playing field with the claims representative and/or defense attorneys. Claim reps
have specialized training, experience, and are closely supervised to operate within strict
insurance company guidelines. Nonetheless, insurance adjusters many times will go to great
lengths to keep an injured accident victim from hiring a personal injury lawyer to
represent them.
Their insurance
company is motivated to do only one thing,
settle your claim as cheaply as possible.
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