Report Shows Medical Malpractice Insurers Earning High Profits
A new report shows that the country's largest malpractice insurers, far from bending under the strain of malpractice payouts, are actually earning profits that are higher than those of most Fortune 500 companies.
The report analyzes the annual financial statements of 10 of the largest insurers, and the results show that:
The average profits of these companies are higher than 99 percent of all Fortune 500 companies.
The average profit of these insurers is 35 times higher than the average for Fortune 500 companies in the same time period
The profit margins of these insurers range between 5.9 percent to a maximum of 74.8 percent with an average profit margin of 31.2 percent
That’s not all. The report also indicates that insurers have been showing lower profits than they actually earned, and higher losses than they actually incurred, in order to create a sense of anxiety about the health of the insurance industry, and to support restrictions of patients' rights to justice. According to the report, insurance companies, over the last five years, have incurred losses that are actually 13.5 percent lower than they first reported. They have also enjoyed 5.1 percent higher profits last year on an average, and 12.4 percent higher profits two years ago.
These figures show how hollow insurers' arguments that high medical malpractice payouts are contributing to high costs of health care, really are. They also underscore what Indiana medical malpractice lawyers have been saying all along - insurers seem to be having the last laugh as they enjoy their hefty bottom-lines, while patients have their rights to justice restricted severely in the form of damage caps.
