Editorial: Doctors are misplacing the blame

Monday, Aug. 5, 2002 | 8:59 a.m.

While many doctors are lauding the Legislature's passage last week of tort reform to deal with the medical malpractice insurance crisis, many others are complaining that Nevada's new law really isn't tort reform at all. The doctors had wanted the Legislature to pass a bill mirroring California's law, passed in 1975 and which still includes a $250,000 cap on jury awards for pain and suffering in medical malpractice cases. Instead, Nevada passed a bill with a $350,000 cap, which is still more restrictive than many states with caps, including our neighbors Utah and Idaho, whose caps, currently $400,000, are adjusted for inflation each year. Our ceiling can be raised only in extreme cases of malpractice. While it may not be everything the doctors wanted, the new law places a significant curb on jury awards. Of the 16 states with caps, only five have lower on es than Nevada's. Nevertheless, several doctors are still talking about leaving the state. We ask all doctors to refrain fr! om hasty decisions, to give the law some time.

Doctors who are criticizing the governor and legislators are misplacing their anger, which now should be directed at the insurance companies. The new legislation almost certainly will result in lower jury awards and the insurance companies should push down their rates accordingly. But so far all that the insurance companies have said is that it might take years before the doctors see some relief in their malpractice premiums. The irony, of course, is that it was the insurance industry that encouraged the doctors to push for tort reform legislation. If the insurance industry alone had advocated tort reform, the bill would have gone nowhere. But once the respected medical profession was on board, the legislation was assured of success. The doctors were used by the insurance industry, plain and simple.

Even if Nevada had adopted California's law, which is the most restrictive in the nation, there would have been no guarantee that insurers would have immediately lowered the rates. The truth is that insurance companies are unlikely to budge without a law directed at them. The next time the Legislature debates this issue, the focus should not be on a bill setting parameters for juries, but on a bill toughening the regulations governing the insurance companies.