Facts about the medical liability crisis

• The unrestrained escalation of jury awards and settlements are driving up liability insurance costs so high that insurance companies, doctors and trauma centers are being forced out of business.
• In the liability crisis, there is a direct chain-reaction link between escalating and uncontrolled jury awards and patient access to care: Liability companies are paying out $1.50 in jury verdicts and settlements for every $1 collected in premiums, forcing companies to increase premiums or drop liability coverage all together; as premiums rise and companies drop coverage, doctors are left scrambling for insurance and often must move or change their practices to qualify for insurance or reduce costs; without doctors able to take trauma call, emergency centers are forced to close; without doctors or emergency centers in the community, patients are left without necessary medical care.
• More than one-half of all jury awards exceed one million dollars and the average award is nearly $3.5 million.
• Over the past several years, physicians across the country have faced double, and sometimes triple, digit rate increases and many high-risk specialists are now paying as much as $300,000 per year in states without adequate medical liability reforms in place. In addition, many physicians have had to reduce their insurance levels to alarmingly low levels in order to afford coverage at all.
• 64.8 percent of American high-risk specialists have made changes in their practice because of the liability crisis, including no longer providing certain services, referring complex cases and closing their practices.
• Trauma centers are closing their doors either temporarily or permanently in several states including Nevada, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Florida and New Jersey because of a loss of the requisite number of specialists to perform emergency services.
• The Congressional Budget Office estimates that medical liability reforms could save the federal government as much as $54 billion over the next decade. According to the CBO, new research also shows that legal reforms would lower malpractice insurance premiums for health care providers, and encourage cost savings by eliminating the need for physicians to order unnecessary tests and procedures aimed primarily at defending their decisions in court.
• It is estimated that enacting federal medical liability reform legislation could save between $84-151 billion in health care costs each year.

The convergence of all of these factors is clearly impeding patient access to health care.

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