From: "Steve Ewing" 

On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 20:56:29 -0500, Geo  wrote:

> "Mark"  wrote in message
> news:420c3297$1{at}w3.nls.net...
>
>> Yea, well, they saw a convenient "storm," and used it.
It looks like the
>> tort reform is going to pass, I expect both the Bush administration and
>> congress to watch the insurance companies and force them to lower their
>> rates due to their reduced risk if they don't do it on their own first.
>
> ROFL!!! Force them to lower rates?
>
> When was the last time something like that happened? I mean thinking back
> the closest I can come is when they slapped the windfall profits tax on
> the
> oil companies and that's not even close to what you are suggesting since
> that was just a way for the gov to get a piece of the action.
>
> Geo.

Granted, tompaine.com, but I couldn't find the article I was looking for
 from some Texas paper (Dallas Morning News?) making the same point
regarding Texas:
http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/7232
=====
...But as Congress prepares to respond, tort reform advocates are ignoring
an important fact: Doctors and others demanded caps on jury awards when
insurance rates spiked in the 1970s and 1980s. Thirty states -- some of the
very states where doctors are now calling for federal limits on jury awards
-- subsequently adopted jury caps, but the caps haven't lowered or
stabilized insurance rates.

According to government studies of the last rate crisis, premiums only fell
when the market and economy began to recover in the early 1990s.

"So regardless of whether you believe caps limit the amounts that
insurance companies pay out, it's demonstrable that it doesn't reduce
insurance rates," said Jay Angoff, an attorney who was Missouri's
insurance commissioner from 1993-98.

In the 1980s, when most states adopted their award caps, Angoff said it was
assumed that regulating juries would reel in insurance costs. But that's
not what ensued in Missouri, which adopted a $350,000 cap, he said, because
insurers never passed along any savings to consumers.

"It stands to reason that tort reform, especially if the cap is real
low, has got to reduce the amount that insurance companies will pay
out," Angoff said. "But that doesn't mean the industry will pass
it through to the consumer."

Notably, California capped jury awards in 1975, but that didn't stop
premiums from rising. What did hold them down was the aggressive insurance
reforms passed by the state in 1988.

California's remedy was Proposition 103, a ballot measure put forth by
consumer activists. It required the industry to justify rate increases and
ordered rebates to the public -- including to doctors. Premium costs
leveled off only after it took effect...
=====


--
Steve 
http://www.qmss.com/sewing

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