On page 29, you will find a chart which provides both he amount of yearly malpractice premiums and the related payouts to victims and lawyers.
Victims’ lawyers pay is in included in the payouts. Defense lawyers would be included in the premiums. Most of the insurance companies’ income is missing because I do not think investment income is included. Insurance companies try to string out settlements as long as possible, usually settling the day before trial. This increases insurance company’s profit and payout to defense lawyers.
Re: defensive medicine costs, I am sure there are some, but there appear to be no good studies on how much. I have seen estimates range from $100 billion to $200 billion, and 10% or $240 billion. There seems to be some problem figuring out how much of the extra tests are because of fear of lawyers, and how much is by doctors to pad the bill.
For egs, the extra c-sections are often blamed on John Edwards, however as one article pointed out, Medicare pays an extra $5,000 for c-sections, private insurance even more. So are doctors doing them for fear of evil lawyers, or for the extra five grand?
In the article I linked above, there is another link to a New Yorker article, “gawande”. Go to that and a Texas lawyer admits its not the lawyers, its the extra money.
If lawyers get 40% of $4.5 billion, that about $2 billion for the greedy lawyers. If doctors order $240 billion in extra test, that’s well,. . .$240 billion for the health care industry. Do the math. Read the link.
parsy, who reports, and let’s you decide
parsy, who says work
Thank you for the explanation. I am not in or near that industry, so I have very little information regarding how the lawyers get paid. My assumption (always a dangerous beast - the assumption) was that legal defense costs were outside the scope of malpractice insurance.
In the following post, you point out the fraud in Medicare. I daresay (probably another assumption) that the dollar value of Medicare and medicaid fraus is understated, if only because of the paltry payment schedule used for these systems.
Have a great day, FRiend Parsy, who likes to say something clever!