Quote:
Originally Posted by ERCougar
You're really out of your realm here. The reason they're settling is the wildly disparate risk they're facing. That said, more and more are challenging them in court. I assure you that this is the chief complaint docs have about their carriers--their unwillingness to take things to court. I have yet to hear of a case of a bad-faith lawsuit. They may exist, but they're rare. I follow this issue pretty closely as ER is one of the higher liability fields--I'm sure if they were common, I would have read of several examples by now.
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Sorry buddy, you are out of your realm and you missed the point of the post. I iwll certainly give you the meidcal testing issues (within reason), becasue you obvioualy are way ahead of me there, but you dont' understand how insurers work if you think they are settling against doctors' wishes and have always done so just for the hell of it. Carriers would be happy to refuse to settle more often except it risks an adverse bad faith verdict if they do so and expose their insured to a judgement above limits. Ask all these docotr friends of yours that face the issue if they are willing to release the insurer from any bad faith claims if they fail to settle within limits. If they do, I think many carriers would be willing to roll the dice. Also, suggest that they lower their malpractice limits so that the carrier has less at risk. This would also result in more trials. Docotrs love a hard nosed carrier as long as a) the carrier is paying for the defense and b) there is no risk of erpsonal exposure to the doctor. Under these circumstances, the docotr can complain loudly about the settlment without ever having faced any risk herself.
Btw, the bad faith aspect of the law is long settled. SOme of the leading bad fatih cases in California (e.g. Isaacson and Spindle, to name just a coupld of of the top of my head) come from the 70s and 80s and involved claims by docotrs against their carriers alleging the carriers didn't ahndle the malpractice defense properly. Their lack of frequency now is preciselty becaseu the insurers were repososinve to the ealrier challenges and attempt to aovid risk to their insureds.
I also find it amusing that you rely so heavily on your fellow doctors' unhappiness abotu their insurer settling suits. It reminds me of a baseball fight. "If only you guys hadn't a held me back, I would have cleaned his clock!" What else will your buddies say? Have you EVER heard something like: "The settlment was good becasue I really screwed up" ?