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THE SPREAD OF THE PENNSYLVANIA MODEL
July 1, 2002
    By happenstance today, while in the coffee shop at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore following prostate cancer surgery, I picked up USA Today. The front page carried the following headline

Fed-up obstetricians
Look for way out
Insurance rates drive some off:
Others drive away

    The article was about obstetricians leaving Las Vegas or closing their obstetrical practice under the pressure of skyrocketing malpractice rates. In a box on the right hand side, USA Today sub- headlined

Malpractice crisis brewing

Underneath, it wrote:

    The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is warning that rising malpractice insurance premiums are threatening the availability of doctors to deliver babies in nine states. The American Medical Association adds three more to the list where doctors are moving or dropping services because of high rates.

    The states: Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, West Virginia, Ohio, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Texas, Nevada, Washington and Oregon.

    The article included a half-a-dozen anecdotal stories of doctors with large practices who either left for more rural areas, like Maine, or closed the obstetrical side of their practice and refused to deliver babies while continuing the gynecological side, an area on which the trial
lawyers hadn’t yet focused.

    This very serious article was not without its silly moments. Consider the following Beasley-like comment:

    Reno attorney Bill Bradley, past president of the Nevada Trail Lawyers Association, blames the ‘very vile nature of the insurance industry’ not a lack of tort reform, for the rise in malpractice premiums in his state.’ Instead of settling a claim, insurers often prefer to go to court where even bigger judgments are levied against their clients,’ he says. ‘The insurers use these judgments to support higher rates, ’ he says. Sure Bill. And the Jews caused the Holocaust to get sympathy.

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Lawyers,Judges and Journalists:
The Corrupt and The Corruptors

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