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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (23143)	10/31/2005 3:03:24 AM
From: energyplay	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

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.... **** 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.

To: cnyndwllr who wrote (23143)	10/31/2005 6:36:47 PM
From: ian124	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

<<WASHINGTON - Higher prices and not lawsuits or other factors have driven up health care costs in the United States, according to a study published Tuesday. Malpractice awards in the United States amounted to only $16 per capita in 2001, compared with $12 in Britain and $10 in Australia, the team at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found.>> Similarly, it was noted that the cost of violence in America has been grossly overstated. "Ammunition is cheap," noted a study author. "We have found that even in situations where multiple shots are fired, the cost of a killing is three or four bucks, tops."