Medical malpractice insurance companies and even the American Medical Association try to blame "excess litigation" and "high jury verdicts" as the reasons for high medical malpractice insurance premiums. Certainly, insurers have motives for blaming lawyers and lawsuits, which include deferring the frustration doctors have with costly premiums.

Medical malpractice insurers would rather obscure the issue calling on governments to enact irrational caps on damages arbitrarily limiting amounts persons may recover for disability and disfigurement. Not coincidently, such caps increased insurers to past profits. Recently however, an ally of the medical malpractice insurance industry revealed some truths.
Medical malpractice insurance covers doctors and other professionals in the medical field for liability claims arising from their treatment of patients.

The cost of medical malpractice insurance has been rising. The hard market began in 2000, after almost a decade of essentially flat prices. Rate increases have been precipitated in part by the growing size of claims, particularly in urban areas. Among the other factors driving up prices is a reduced supply of available coverage as insurers exit the medical malpractice business because of the difficulty of making a profit and rapidly rising medical care costs.

In some states, the cost of medical malpractice insurance or Medical Liability Insurance for physicians has risen dramatically and continues to rise. Physicians carry medical malpractice insurance to cover claims of medical negligence. Some insurers are quoting rates double and triple the rates of just a year ago. In some cases, doctors are being charged higher premiums for less coverage. The high rates are not limited to doctors: hospital emergency rooms, trauma centers, birthing centers, and nursing homes are in jeopardy of closing because neither the doctors nor the hospitals can afford the insurance necessary to remain open.

Physicians, feeling they have limited options, are threatening to retire early, to leave the state to practice in another state with lower premiums, or to cease performing the risky procedures that are largely responsible for higher premiums. For example, in some states obstetricians have stopped accepting new pregnant patients or will no longer deliver babies, and neurosurgeons will no longer staff trauma centers or emergency rooms, forcing those facilities to close or lose their rating.