Headlines proclaim, "Brain Damaged Child Awarded $10 Million"! "Obstetricians Flee Practice." "Pregnant Women Cannot Find Doctors." You have seen them too frequently. They are signs of the all-too-familiar malpractice insurance crisis. In light of some new proposed solutions, it is worth reviewing the causes of this crisis and approaches to a solution.
There are a variety of factors driving the obstetric malpractice crisis and each has several causes. One factor is our increasingly litigious society that seeks compensation for an injury whether or not that injury was another person's fault. The publicity surrounding the occasional huge multimillion-dollar verdicts and the increasing size of settlements and awards in malpractice cases in general have made the tort system a growth industry for lawyers and have made lawsuits an appealing solution for parents who see an otherwise bleak and expensive future for their impaired child. A second factor is pure misinformation. Because cerebral