TACKLING THE HIGHEST MEDICAL MALPRACTICE INSURANCE RATES IN THE NATION
The Consumer Protection Coalition supports medical malpractice reform strategies that rein in Florida’s highest-in-the-nation insurance premiums and eliminate unfounded medical malpractice lawsuits and penalties. Florida’s high medical malpractice insurance premiums are an additional contributor to our medical workforce shortage, driving physicians to practice in other states, switch specialties, abstain from performing high-risk procedures, or even retire early from the practice of medicine.
States that have reformed their medical malpractice systems have drastically improved their medical malpractice insurance market and workforce. Texas implemented non-economic damage caps in 2003 and has seen a 46% decrease in medical malpractice insurance premiums since implementation. Texas has also seen its medical licenses triple between 2003 and 2022.
Proper medical malpractice reforms would lower medical malpractice insurance costs, attract top-tier doctors and healthcare professionals, and help alleviate the workforce shortage.
Unfinished Business
Medical Negligence Reform that reinstates non-economic damage caps to help address Florida’s highest medical malpractice insurance costs in the nation would encourage physicians to practice in Florida, while also protecting existing individual providers from losses that may drive them out of Florida or out of the healthcare system entirely.