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November 11, 2007
New York Forced to Choose between Doctors and Lawyers
Posted by Dave Blount at November 11, 2007 12:14 PM
Predictably, New York State's socialist approach to the malpractice insurance crisis is not working.
Thanks to pathologically greedy ambulance chasers like John Edwards, doctors carry a crippling burden. Malpractice insurance costs run into six figures. Yet even at these prices, insurance providers cannot break even, due to the stratospheric amounts of loot lawyers have been expropriating from the medical profession.
One medical malpractice carrier faces a $500 million deficit. To cover it would require raising rates that are already extremely excessive by $50,000 a year, thus driving out of the state any doctor who could find work elsewhere.
Last July state Superintendent Eric Dinallo raised rates by 14%, half of what one carrier said it needed to break even. At the time he announced:
After years of failing to confront the fundamental problems that have led to this current environment, we have inherited the worst of both worlds: physicians who cannot afford to practice medicine, and insurers whose financial condition is rapidly eroding.
The corrupt tort system imposed by Democrats, who are largely financed by trial lawyers, is only the most obvious reason. Another is government involvement in malpractice insurance. New York bureaucrats actually looted $700 million from an state-controlled insurance company to close budget gaps in the early to mid-1990s.
The Democrat solution? Keep up the extravagant lawsuits, and socialize medicine. When these insane policies have driven American doctors into extinction, we can take the British approach and import Muslim doctors — which of course will lead to even more problems.
On a tip from Wiggins.
