Word: caps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Despite Colorado's unusually strict damage cap, the state's largest insurer raised premiums 14% this year, the biggest jump in 15 years. So far at least, the cap law is failing to deliver the relief that it promised to doctors even as it blocks relief to acknowledged victims like Jim McDonough. --By Rita Healy/Denver
...lost a combined $8 billion since 1995, and its reserves for estimated future claims are underfunded by about $4.6 billion. So if insurers aren't profiting from higher premiums, who is? Zuk and his peers point to trial lawyers and frivolous claimants. Insurers are lobbying alongside doctors for caps on noneconomic damages (for pain and suffering), like the ones in California and 18 other states. Rising awards, Zuk says, are bleeding money out of the system and forcing insurers to raise premiums. Cap the damages, and premiums will fall in line, he says...
...with California doctors in an effort to come up with a national version of her state's malpractice law. California allows unlimited amounts to be awarded for the economic damages a patient suffers as a result of a doctor's error, such as lost wages and medical bills, but caps noneconomic awards for pain and suffering at $250,000. The cap works, Feinstein believes. Nationwide, doctors' insurance premiums grew 420% from 1975 to 2001, while California's premiums, she says, are up only 168%. (Some experts credit the lower premiums to insurance reforms the state also adopted...
Feinstein and Frist drafted a compromise. Since California's $250,000 cap was set 28 years ago, says Feinstein, today it would be an inflation-adjusted $780,000. So she and Frist suggested doubling the cap to $500,000. For catastrophic cases that resulted in severe disfigurement, severe physical disability or death, says Feinstein, the cap would be the greater of $2 million or $50,000 times the number of years of life expectancy. The 25 states that have laws limiting damages could keep their caps if they did not want to adopt the Federal Government...
When Feinstein floated the draft measure, she hit two walls. Trial lawyers hated caps. And doctors said the caps were too high and wouldn't stabilize their malpractice premiums. "There's just no way to proceed at this time," Feinstein says. The House, where Republicans have firmer control, has passed the $250,000 cap Bush wants. But for now, a bill like Feinstein's won't pass in the Senate. She blames the deadlock mostly on doctors who won't compromise. "There has to be a change of heart in the medical profession," she says, "for something to proceed...