A new report from Hiscox, a specialist health insurance company in the U.S., shows that so called “super losses” are having an impact on the country’s health insurance industry. Super losses is a term that refers to claims that exceed $50 million. The report notes that these costly claims are becoming more common in the health care sector. Because these claims hold such a large price tag, they often find their way to courts. Juries often side with consumers in these cases and in the past two years have awarded over $1 billion to only seven medical liability cases.
The report shows that these claims are occurring more frequently despite new safety measures enacted to keep patients safe. As such, more attention is being put on the sources of medical negligence and other forms of malpractice. Insurers are pressuring health care organizations and hospitals to take a hard look at the practices of their staff and weed out any potential problems that could lead to malpractice lawsuits.
Unless more aggressive measures are taken to put a stop to malpractice, Hiscox believes that the trend of super losses will be on the rise for the foreseeable future. This will have major implications on the cost of malpractice insurance and, perhaps, on the cost of medical care in the future. This trend is not likely to be affected by the Affordable Care Act, which focuses on providing consumers with access to affordable health insurance and offers little to no benefits to health care providers.
