Insurance reform, not tort reform, needed

Once again, Americans are hearing about and experiencing an insurance crisis. Pregnant women are blocked from prenatal care because no obstetrician in her area will accept new patients due to medical liability issues. Homeowners are having their property liability insurance cancelled despite few claims. Municipalities are experiencing unexpected budget crises as insurance renewal costs far exceed recent premium experience.

Predictably, this so-called “crisis” is being blamed on greedy trial lawyers and carefree juries that award multi-million verdicts that are akin to hitting the lottery. Demands for tort-reform are in the air as the proposed solution.

Tort reform is code language for taking away people’s rights. Supporters of tort reform generally propose a common set of proposals including capping non-economic damages, i.e. all of the harm someone suffers outside of direct medical costs and lost wages when the negligent action of someone else has caused them harm, limiting who one can sue, making it harder to file a lawsuit by shortening the statute of limitations, the period in which one must file a lawsuit before such right to legal action expires, erecting procedural obstacles to getting to court, such as pre-litigation screening panels, and capping attorney fees. All of these proposals have the effect of limiting victims’ rights to the benefit of insurance companies and defendants.

The Maine People’s Alliance has been a staunch defender of the civil justice system, our process for resolving claims between individuals and businesses that are not a criminal concern, since our founding. During a previous insurance liability crisis in 1987, we created the Campaign for Fair Rates and Equal Justice to expose insurance industry price gouging and to defend victims’ rights. Our success has forced the insurance companies and corporations to retreat in their assault on our legal rights to one narrow but important area – medical malpractice.

As you listen to candidates for public office this fall, beware of those who tout tort reform as a solution to medical provider problems in the state. Americans for Insurance Reform, a national coalition of over 60 consumer and public interest groups, recently compiled data showing average medical malpractice premiums expressed in the equivalent of year 2000 dollars have dropped nationwide from $11,614 in 1991 to $7,843 in 2000, a decline of 32 percent. During that same period, medical inflation rose 50.8 percent. Insurance companies severely under priced medical malpractice insurance during this period and now are attempting to recoup profitability due to their shoddy business practices.

Insurance reform is what this situation demands, not the restriction of our legal rights. Ask candidates this fall what they intend to do to address the real source of the problem, insurance industry greed and incompetence instead of the smoke screen of tort reform. We should never sacrifice our legal rights for the insurance industry’s outrageous profits.

John Dieffenbacher-Krall is the co-director of the Maine People’s Alliance.