Posted On: May 23, 2005, 3:01 pm CDT

Posted By: B

AIA is correct that the Duke report is bogus because it uses inappropriate data to draw it's conclusion. Unfortunately, then AIA then says we should look at the insurance companies' Incurred Claims to measure the tort system. Incurred Claims included a lot of guessing and sometimes fudging by the insurance companies on open claim reserves. If they were accurate at guessing claim reserves, we would not go through such drastic hard and soft market swings. Don't ask the public to rely on the insurance companies guesses at future payouts. If AIA wants to be accurate they should use just "Paid Claims" to review trends in the tort system. And if they want to be totaly correct they should point out that, in addition to the greedy plaintifs attorneys and the lottery minded juries, the insurance companies have contributed to this problem by trying to satisfy shareholders with premium volume growth rather than long term inderwriting results.