It said in a USA Editorial yesterday that we -- Miami Dade County -- hold the record for highest cost of medical liability insurance. Why does Florida always hold records in the most crappy stuff? We are hightest (or near highest) in things like foreclosures, mortgage fraud, etc. Now we have another record we can be ashamed of:
Medical Liability Insurance Rates
OB/GYN Coverage: $238,728
General Surgeons: $214,893
Internists: $54,710
Lawyers, why does Miami Dade hold this title? What's cooking?
2 comments:
This factoid points to the aggressive bar and the numerous targets for litigation. There are lots of dirty doctors in this town just as there are lots of dirty lawyers. It's a shame since lawsuits serve an important social purpose.
No, that premise is outdated. It was perhaps true once that lawsuits served an important purpose. Today, there are simply too many lawyers in the US who need to eat, and so a highly inefficient wealth transfer mechanism has become well-entrenched. The bar--both sides--is as well-ensconced as any other industry--actually better than most in the US, but especially here because of the "anything goes" mentality. As with growth, the costs are simply externalized: Short-term profits, long-term social death. The countervailing argument, perhaps, is that we are all dead in the long run so let someone else clean up our mess.
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