Our New PopTort PopQuiz - Online Edition!

With so much important focus on health care right now, we thought, “what a great time to test your medical malpractice knowledge!” And we have just the thing: our latest PopTort Pop Quiz, in honor of publication of the Center for Justice & Democracy's newly updated medical malpractice briefing book, as well as CJ&D’s new insurance study, How the Cash Rich Insurance Industry Fakes Crises and Invents Social Inflation. 

BUT PLEASE DO NOT COME TO SCHOOL! Safety first. For now, all Pop Quizzes are entirely online!

1. Let’s start with emergency rooms. Even before they were stressed with the coronavirus, they had problems. Of medical malpractice claims caused by emergency room errors, how many resulted in death?

1. 5%
2. 10%
3. 25%
4. More than 33%

That would be “d. “After analyzing over 1,300 closed medical malpractice claims filed against hospitals between 2014 and 2018 over emergency department care, the insurance provider [Coverys] found that 61 percent of claims involved serious injury, with more than one-third resulting in death.” See more here.

2. How many bad surgical outcomes each year are due to preventable human error?

1. 1,000
2. 10,000
3. 50,000
4. 400,000

The answer is “d.” According to a 2019 JAMA study, ‘There are approximately 17 million surgical procedures performed in the United States each year….  If the adverse outcome rate is about 5 percent, and half of those are due to human error, as seen in our cohort and reported in other studies, it would mean that about 400,000 adverse outcomes could be prevented each year.’” 

3. There is an impending shortage of oncologists in America today. True or False: This shortage is happening because medical malpractice lawsuits and insurance rates are driving doctors out of the profession.

False. Reasons for this shortage have nothing to do with liability. Data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, board certification and self-reported information from over 18,000 full-time, board-certified oncologists show that “an imminent wave of retiring oncologists,” coupled with a growing demand for cancer treatment, will cause a shortage of practitioners across the country. 

4. During the last insurance crisis (2002-2005) when doctors were begin price-gouged with skyrocketing insurance rates and insurers blamed claims and lawsuits, insurers were actually overstating their losses by what annual percentage?

1. 0 percent – insurers were being honest about their losses
2. 10 percent
3. 25 percent
4. 33 percent

Yup, the answer is “d.” According to the new study from Consumer Federation of America and Center for Justice & Democracy, How the Cash Rich Insurance Industry Fakes Crises and Invents Social Inflation, “New evidence shows clearly that doctors were price-gouged during the last hard market (2002 to 2005). Doctors paid increasingly high premiums while paid claims actually dropped. Medical malpractice insurers were misrepresenting their actual losses by an incredible annual average of 33%.” 

5. True or False. Over the last 20 years, while insurers saw major reductions in their losses, they reduced premiums for doctors only $1 for every $3 in reduced claims payments.

That, my friends, is absolutely True. The back-up for this statistics, and many other shocking insurance facts, can be found in How the Cash Rich Insurance Industry Fakes Crises and Invents Social Inflation. 

Just a short quiz this time. Go home and stay safe out there!