J. Bradley Karl

The relationship between the markets for health insurance and medical malpractice insurance

ABSTRACT This article evaluates the interdependence of medical malpractice insurance markets and health insurance markets. Prior research has addressed the performance of these markets, individually, without specifically quantifying the extent to which they are linked. Increasing levels of health insurance losses could increase the scale of potential malpractice claims, boosting medical malpractice losses, or could embody an improvement in medical care quality, which will reduce malpractice losses. Our results for a state panel data set from 2002 to 2009 demonstrate that health insurance losses are negatively related to medical malpractice insurance losses. An additional dollar of health insurance losses is associated with a

Market Implications of Public Policy Interventions: The Case of Florida's Property Insurance Market

0.01–

The net effects of medical malpractice tort reform on health insurance losses: the Texas experience

0.05 reduction in medical malpractice losses. These findings have potentially important implications for assessments of the net cost of health insurance policies.

Improving Perceptions of the Insurance Industry: The Influence of Insurance Professionals

This article asserts that the market for property insurance, particularly homeowners insurance, in the State of Florida is experiencing failures, and that a combination of market problems, externalities, and interventions unique to Florida led to these failures. The authors provide evidence of market failures in the form of undesirable market outcomes, both over time and in comparison to other coastal states. Also, they provide a narrative description of the market events, problems, and policies preceding these adverse market developments and link the narrative to the evidence. Recommendations for a return to risk-based pricing and incentives for appropriate property mitigation are made.

The effect of product diversification strategies on the performance of health insurance conglomerates

In this paper, we examine the influence of medical malpractice tort reform on the level of private health insurance company losses incurred. We employ a natural experiment framework centered on a series of tort reform measures enacted in Texas in 2003 that drastically altered the medical malpractice environment in the state. The results of a difference-in-differences analysis using a variety of comparison states, as well as a difference-in-difference-in-differences analysis, indicate that ameliorating medical malpractice risk has little effect on health insurance losses incurred by private health insurers.

Market Structure and the Performance of the U.S. Health Insurance Marketplace: A State-Level Analysis

The “talent crisis” in the insurance industry is well documented. Solutions to this crisis, however, are not plentiful. One of the major challenges faced by the industry is its reputation. We hypothesize that opinions of the industry can be changed through brief but specific education efforts. We test our hypothesis at a major university and find very strong support for our hypothesis.

The Effect of Tort Reform on Medical Malpractice Insurance Market Trends

ABSTRACT The conglomerate organizational structure of health insurers suggests two distinct methods of product diversification – the first is firm-level diversification, or diversification within individual affiliates, and the second is conglomerate-level diversification, or diversification across affiliates of the conglomerate. We hypothesize that using both firm- and conglomerate-level diversification may magnify the costs or benefits of diversification on the financial performance of the conglomerate. Our results confirm this hypothesis and suggest a positive relation between health insurer financial performance and the use of both product line diversification methods. Our results not only contribute to the body of literature related to corporate diversification but are also important to policymakers and all health insurance market participants as portions of the Affordable Care Act continue to be implemented.

THE EFFECT OF DAMAGE CAP REFORMS ON MEDICAL MALPRACTICE INSURANCE MARKET CONDITIONS DURING PERIODS OF CRISES : DAMAGE CAPS AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

Health insurance premiums have more than doubled over the last ten years, with some suggesting that this may be the result of the high market concentration in the health insurance industry. In this paper, we conduct a state-level analysis in which we examine the health insurance marketplace, the degree of market concentration, and health insurance costs across states. We generally find that the barrier to entry into health insurance market is relatively low, as witnessed by the increase in the number of insurers operating in most states over the sample period; accordingly, the extent of market concentration has declined in recent years. We also find evidence of a positive relation between market concentration and insurer profits.