Hype outraces facts in the debate over malpractice insurance. USA Today reported that a six-week study disclosed that "premiums are rising rapidly, but no more than other health costs. They represent only a small slice of doctors' expenses. On average, doctors still spend less on malpractice insurance - 3.2 percent of their revenue - than on rent."

The study revealed that last year OB-GYNs paid the most for malpractice insurance, as a percentage of their revenue (6.7 percent) and cardiologists paid the least (1.5 percent). By comparison, the study notes that physicians pay 12.4 percent for staff salaries and 11.6 percent for office expenses. All of these expenditures, including the malpractice premiums, are business expenses, fully tax-deductible from physicians' gross revenues.

A recent Business Week article reported that malpractice payouts have risen almost exactly at the rate of medical inflation, and nationwide in 2001 they amounted to less than 1 percent of the country's overall health costs.

Significantly, USA Today fount that the average malpractice premium increases last year "are nearly the same as those seen the past two years in health-insurance premiums paid by workers and their employers." Thus, it appears that the insurance industry is equally sticking it to all of us, but the medical profession chooses to solve their self-declared "crisis" by joining with the insurance industry in a multimillion-dollar campaign to limit the rights of patients injured by physician negligence.

Instead, physicians should heed USA Today's point that the way to lower malpractice costs is by improving medical care to reduce errors. A 1999 study by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, blamed medical mistakes for the deaths of 44,000 to 98,000 hospitalized Americans each year. That amounts to more deaths than from car accidents, breast cancer or AIDS.

Seriously injured victims of malpractice suffer not only physical pain, but are transformed from able-bodied, self-respecting, productive people to pitiable, crippled dependents. In addition to the humiliation and emotional strains that accompany such a situation, victims suffer the loss of the enjoyment of life that we all take for granted. These life-altering, lifelong damages should not have an artificial, one-size-fits-all monetary cap.
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James Duffy is a partner at the Uniondale, New York, law firm of Duffy, Duffy & Burdo, Esqs.