Yesterday the New York State Legislature signed a bill relating to medical malpractice. When I first saw the little headline, I thought “good for them, someone has to reign in the malpractice attorneys.”
How silly was I to expect anything sane to come out of Albany? Did they cap punitive damages in medical malpractice claims? No, of course not! The bill they signed limits the amount of premiums insurance companies can charge: “the superindent (of insurance) shall not establish or approve any increase in rates for the period commencing July 1 2008 and ending June 30, 2009.”
So regardless of malpractice payouts by insurance companies, they can’t increase premiums.
Thanks to Albany, insurance companies no longer want to write workers’ compensation policies in NY. Why would they? They can’t make any money. New York has one of the lowest weekly compensation rates to injured workers, yet somehow New York’s found a way to make this one of the costliest states in the nation to write insurance. And the Insurance Department regulates what they can charge in premiums.
Now they go and do this! Let’s show some more insurance companies the way out of this state. I don’t know if Albany noticed, but insurance companies are employers, too.
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