Postcard Explains That Insurance Reform, Not Medical Malpractice Cap, Lowered California Doctors’ Rates
Santa Monica, CA — Dr. Richard Anderson, one of the nation’s most vociferous advocates of a $250,000 lifetime cap on pain and suffering damages for injuries caused by medical malpractice, is an insurance executive who makes that much money in two months and lives on a palatial estate in Napa Valley, California, according to a consumer advocacy group.
The Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR) today unveiled a postcard campaign urging Congress to reject legislation, sponsored by the insurance industry and the American Medical Association, that would prohibit juries from awarding full compensation to victims of medical negligence.
The postcard, titled “Greetings from The Doctors Company,” is an aerial photo of the estate and vineyard owned by Richard Anderson, a doctor and CEO of the nation’s fourth largest medical malpractice insurer, The Doctors Company. It was sent to all members of Congress with a message countering Anderson’s consistent misrepresentations about the impact of California’s malpractice damage cap, by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (FTCR).
“In less than two months, Anderson makes more than he proposes injured women, children, seniors and low income Americans should get from a jury for a lifetime of pain and suffering,” reads the postcard. “We thought you should see how he lives — and benefits — from keeping doctors’ insurance rates high.”
The postcard continues: “What Anderson doesn’t mention is that premiums rose 450% in the thirteen years after the damage cap was passed in California and did not drop until voters passed strong insurance rate regulation, Proposition 103, in 1988. Regulatory actions under Prop. 103 have saved doctors over $50 million since 2003.”
“It is shameful that the American Medical Association is siding with insurance industry fat cats like Anderson to undermine the right of patients to their day in court when they are injured by negligent physicians, greed-driven HMOs and dangerous pharmaceutical drugs and medical devices,” said Balber.
Read FTCR’s study on the impact of the damage cap, and insurance reform, on California doctors’ malpractice premiums: Click here to download the study.
Click here to view the postcard.
Richard Anderson makes at least $1.7 million a year, according to a filing with the California Department of Insurance in 2000; Anderson has withheld executive salary information in subsequent filings.
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