A Patient Perspective: Focusing on Compensating Harm

A Patient Perspective: Focusing on Compensating Harm

The article develops upon the reasons the tort system is not to blame for the medical malpractice crisis and will explore why tort reform is not a viable solution to the crisis and why the tort system must be preserved as a forum for patient advocates to ensure that medical professional negligence-induced injuries do not go uncompensated (Valerie, 2004). The unique accounting method used by malpractice insurers to arranged premium rates contributes to periodic rate hikes and is consequently a noteworthy suspect in the medical malpractice crisis. The tort system has come under attack in recent year (Valerie, 2004). Statutory Accounting Principles (SAP) system set their rates according to their anticipated costs for a given year. Insurers may overstate their incurred losses, tax benefits associated with overstating incurred losses, and insurers have magnified their insured losses to regain lost investment income. The incentives created by the SAP accounting principles may be one possible cause behind rising malpractice insurance premiums.

Malpractice insurers' declining investment income is another aspect; they make money by investing their premium income in bonds and other conservative instruments.(Valerie, 2004).This income has an explicit shock on premium rates, the insurance lacks that medical malpractice insurers decrease their premium rates in debate of expected contribution income. Ceiling on the amount a patient may recuperate for non-economic damages in any given case is one marketable for physicians and hospitals.

Tort reform proponents believe that out-of-control non-economic damage awards are responsible for premium rate hikes, the threat of large damage awards forces physicians to practice defensive medicine which in turn increases the cost of health care, and caps on non-economic damages are an appropriate solution to the medical malpractice crisis.