Consumer Group Responds to Governor Schwarzenegger's Incorrect Claims About the Impact of Medical Malpra...(and people with limited wage loss are un...),Health

That human toll, however, is not the subject of this letter. Our purpose is to correct Governor Schwarzenegger's analysis of the relationship between malpractice caps and malpractice premiums.

California has, indeed, maintained severe caps on malpractice liability for doctors for more than 30 years, but the Governor ignores the fact that the caps did nothing to reduce doctors' insurance premiums for the first 13 years of the law. We have documented that premiums for California doctors went up by 450% between 1975 and 1988. Only after California voters enacted the comprehensive insurance regulatory system, known as Proposition 103, did doctors begin to see relief from skyrocketing malpractice rates. (You can read our study at http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/documents/1008.pdf.)

In fact, in 2002 and 2003, medical malpractice insurers were attempting to push doctors' premiums skyward in California as in the rest of the nation. Our organization used Proposition 103's right to challenge insurers' rate proposals and fought off $66 million of attempted rate hikes. That is, even with the longstanding and severe malpractice caps in place, doctors in California were facing the same insurance hikes at the beginning of this decade that faced doctors everywhere.

In our challenge to a proposed rate hike by one of California's largest medical malpractice insurers, SCPIE, the company's Vice President and chief actuary James Robertson testified:

While MICRA was the
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