The Doctors Company continues to play an instrumental role in the passage—and continued preservation—of medical liability tort reform legislation on behalf of doctors and all healthcare professionals nationwide. More than 30 states have enacted medical liability reform laws to promote access to healthcare. However, these laws are constantly under attack. The Doctors Company fiercely advocates at the legislative, judicial, and regulatory levels to defend these hard-won protections.
Medical liability reforms preserve access to healthcare by keeping doctors, nurses, and healthcare professionals in practice and hospitals and clinics open, while ensuring injured patients receive fair compensation. Reforms protect patients’ rights and preserve access to the courts. These reforms also maintain access to care and protect the most vulnerable and under-resourced communities from increasing healthcare costs.
Medical liability reforms are also essential in protecting access to specialty and high-risk services, including:
- Ob/gyn and other women’s healthcare
- Rural healthcare
- Low-income healthcare services
- Community clinics
- HIV/AIDS specialty services
Undermining these reforms risks reducing access to routine healthcare, including regular screenings for high blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, cancer, and other serious health risks.
A Model for National Reform: California’s MICRA
California’s Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, or MICRA, has and continues to serve as a model for national reform, and The Doctors Company has been there since its inception.
Over 40 years ago, when California was gripped by a medical malpractice crisis, leading physicians came together to pass MICRA on behalf of doctors and tort reform. MICRA was enacted in 1975 in response to skyrocketing judgments, drastic increases in malpractice insurance premiums, and diminishing access to healthcare. That year, two malpractice insurance companies made major announcements: one notified 2,000 Southern California physicians that their insurance would not be renewed, and the other notified 4,000 Northern California physicians that their premiums would increase by 380 percent.
These companies had determined that the California medical malpractice insurance market had become too risky and unstable for financially sound underwriting. The number of claims had increased by 200 percent in a ten-year period, and the dollar amounts awarded in judgments or settlements had increased 1,000 percent in 10 years.
In the wake of this achievement, The Doctors Company emerged as an entirely new type of insurance carrier—a carrier founded and led by doctors. It was out of this crisis that The Doctors Company was born. In the inaugural year of the company in 1976, 450 physicians subscribed as members. Today, we are the nation’s largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer, protecting over 90,000 members nationwide.
In 2022, for the first time in a generation, many stakeholders came together to modernize MICRA in a way that balances appropriate compensation with preserving the core protections that allow providers to continue practicing in California.
This modernization of MICRA incrementally raises the cap on noneconomic damages over the next decade while keeping MICRA’s essential guardrails in place. California’s healthcare providers can look forward to long-term stability and the end of the continual battles to eliminate MICRA entirely. It is a major step toward achieving an accessible and affordable healthcare system for all Californians.
We have and continue to be proud to have been a part of creating, preserving, and protecting MICRA.
For additional information about MICRA and its provisions, please visit micra.org.
What You Can Do
Lend your voice to the fight for effective medical liability reform by contacting your state and federal representatives and asking them to support medical liability reforms. Take every opportunity to spread the word through your patients, friends, and professional colleagues. Your contribution to The Doctors Company’s federal and state political action committees (DOCPACs) helps us advocate for and defend medical liability reforms nationwide.