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You must be a lawyer.

Several problems with you analysis, not the least of which is that most claims against physicians are settled in favor of the physician. But the physician loses anyway, because he or she bears the risk of paying for the defense anyway. In your analysis, you mention that it would not be fair for an injured party to have to assume this risk...hey, why is it that the attornies don't mind assuming the risk of a contingency case, then? If you want to file suit, and lose, the attorney could pay the legal costs if you are so worried about your clients.

The fact is that big companies cannot diffuse risk efficiently if the costs exceed the premiums charged. The reason premiums are going up is because the risk can no longer be rationally calculated.

A lot of the actions brought against physicians are bogus...how come the trial attorneys never have a thing to say about that? I have had two bogus claims against me this year...one for a complication inherent in the procedure, and one from a women whose husband died of a bad disease, and I happened to read the chest xray. Said it was probably pneumonia, but recommended a follow up examination...less than 10 days passed with the patient getting antibiotics, the problem did not clear, I recommended a CT scan and a biopsy, and the patient had cancer and died. Did nothing wrong in either case, but ended up costing my insurance company thousands to defend, plus my lost income in showing up for depositions,etc.

First of all, I'm not a lawyer.

Secondly, big companies are always LCRBers, no matter what the cost of premiums. Again, this is why insurance exists. This is why most states require you to own automobile insurance.

And I obviously have no medical knowledge, and I know nothing of your situation, but, unless you're a total idiot, I'm pretty sure that you're not going to admit that you were negligent. Let's be honest, you have a bit of a bias in those examples; everyone thinks they are right.

You mentioned that most malpractice claims are settled in favor of the doctor, and I don't doubt that; the system is stacked in favor of the defendant. It's supposed to be that way. Negligence cases have 4 elements: duty, breach, causation, and damages. Each element has to be proven beyond a preponderance of the evidence; failure to do so on any one of those elements results in a not guilty verdict. To say that doctors win most of the time is expected, but this doesn't mean those doctors aren't without fault. Lots of times, especially in medical malpractice cases, preexisting conditions make causation and damages very difficult to prove/show, and the doctor falls ass backwards into an NG. In fact, the only thing that would disturb me is that if doctors LOST most of the time.