Looks like they may have avoided counting all the actions settled out of court - the 'dropped' claims.
It would take some digging to get reasonable esitmates of these numbers. The insurance companies will have them for the people they insure, which is likely to differ by state, insurance company, and their cutomers. Since this tends to be critical competitive information, the Johns Hopkins guys would need to go through an industry group to get some of this info.
Even then, companies with very low or very high claims will be relutant to let go of the inofrmation.
State insurance commissioners may have some of this data , with 50 states, all with slightly differnt laws on either insurance or public disclosure, they should be able to get some where....
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Including the settled out of court itmes may not change their conclusions substantially, or it might.
I expect and would hope this is discussed in thier paper.
Just because you can't easily get a nuber doesn't it goes away.
Otherwise, I would say the researchers are sloppy or lazy, want to slant things, or worse yet, naive. |
