Missouri doctors unable to get private medical malpractice insurance on their own are about to have a new option for attaining coverage from the state according to the state‘s director of the state department of insurance.
Director Scott Lakin said the state will create an underwriting assocation that will sell malpractice insurance beginning in June 2004 to physicians and pool the resources of Missouri insurers to underwrite risk.
Doctors would have to pay twice the market rate for premiums in their first year in the plan, limiting its effectiveness or availability to less than 1 percent of the state‘s physicians.
"It is truly unfortunate that the tort reform legislation passed by both houses of the Missouri legislature are not the law," said NAMIC‘s Legislative and Regulatory Counsel Peter Bisbecos.
