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Wayne County Med Mal Premiums Take Record Dip
By PAUL
NATINSKY
As the
Thanksgiving Holiday approaches, Wayne County physicians will have
one more thing about which to be thankful – lower medical liability
premiums from Michigan’s largest medical liability insurer, American
Physicians Assurance Corporation.
The average rate
reduction for Wayne County doctors, 13 percent, is the highest
single-year reduction in premiums since medical liability reform was
enacted in 1994, and is widely viewed as evidence that tort reforms
are working. Statewide average reductions are 6.5 percent.
“Many people,
including some of our younger physicians, don’t remember the bleak
days of the ‘70s when commercial insurers abandoned Michigan,” said
WCMSSM President Sophie Womack, MD. She said the Michigan State
Medical Society had to form it’s own mutual insurance company to
help cover doctors in the state – but it still wasn’t enough.
As the epicenter
of Michigan’s medical liability crisis, the WCMSSM Board felt
compelled to issue a resolution that resulted in a massive physician
march on Lansing’s Capitol in 1985, resulting in some mild reforms
in 1986, said Dr. Womack. After seven more years of hard work, major
reforms were passed in 1993 and enacted in 1994 placing Michigan at
the forefront of medical liability reform nationally.
“Tort reform is
working; the number of frivolous cases is down,” said Robert
Jackson, MD, an Allen Park physician and member of the American
Physicians Advisory Board.
Dr. Jackson, who
has long been insured by American Physicians, said premiums for
family physicians, pediatricians, obstetricians and internal
medicine physicians have dropped 14 percent, while high-risk
specialties like neurosurgery and orthopedic surgery have
experienced 12 and 25 percent reduction, respectively.
Pulmonologist
Lonnie Joe, MD, of the Detroit Medical Society put recent
developments into perspective: “Tort reform is a mad dog on a leash
– and the news is that we have been able to keep that dog on a leash
for 12 years.”
Dr. Joe took the
opportunity to comment on the ongoing fragility of the 1993 reforms.
“We are probably one election from tort reform going south on us,”
he said. One Michigan Supreme court justice change could tip the
balance of the court unfavorably toward upholding tort reform.
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