Posted On: January 19, 2007, 11:52 am CST

Posted By: Ratemaker

Mike - how many suits are actually filed nationwide?

I'm just playing Devil's Advocate here for a moment.

There should be 2 effects that would reduce premiums here.

Your nationwide numbers show that about $5000 of malpractice claims are paid for each practicing doctor nationwide. But that's just claims paid -- that's not going to include the costs incurred by the medical insurer to defend these cases. Or those incurred by the medical insurer to defend cases where no claim is paid.

Also, what would those average amounts be if the non-economic damages were capped? Average amounts are very sensitive to large outliers. The reduction in the average paid claim should be a measureable effect of a cap on non-economic damages. If the average amount paid goes down, med mal premiums should go down. If med mal premiums go down, the cost of health care should go down.

The other effect would be decreased lawsuit frequency. We can't measure that ahead of time, but I would guess that fewer meritless cases would be filed if the would-be plaintiff knew the amount they could receive was capped.