“State Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, a chiropractor who has filed bills to require doctors to buy coverage, said the increase in uninsured doctors strengthens his case.

“You have to have insurance to drive a cab, but you don’t have to have insurance to do brain surgery?” Jones said. “Patients basically are at risk.”

No one tracks the number of U.S. physicians without coverage or who have filed bankruptcy in the face of a negligence case, but insurance officials, malpractice attorneys and doctors in and out of Florida agreed that no other area of the country has a bigger problem with uninsured doctors than South Florida.

“We’re sort of the [uninsured]-doctor capital of the world,” said Matt Gracey Jr., a malpractice insurance broker in Delray Beach. “I go to conferences and people say, ‘What the heck is going on down there?’”

Boynton Beach retiree Rhoda Fruchter fears she has no recourse against an uninsured doctor she said left her in chronic pain and unable to turn her neck.

Fruchter, 68, sued Dr. Douglas Martin in 2005 claiming the neurosurgeon inserted — then removed — screws in the wrong spot in her neck, said her attorney, Kenneth Sobel. She didn’t realize Martin had dropped his coverage.

Martin’s attorney, Roy Watts, denied the doctor did anything wrong and said Martin went uninsured because his premiums would cost more than the coverage offered. “It makes no sense for him to have it,” Watts said.

Complicating matters, Martin had filed for bankruptcy in 2000, which if approved would shield many of his assets. Among them, his 6,000-square-foot home on the Intracoastal Waterway valued by the county at $2.1 million.

“The doctor hurt me,” Fruchter said. “He’s living in his mansion, living the high life. How does this guy get away with this?”

Watts said the bankruptcy was unrelated to the lawsuit. Both cases are pending.

Florida has long required chiropractors, podiatrists, midwives, some nurses, acupuncturists and optometrists be insured, but medical doctors were allowed to go without coverage to help them cope with Florida’s high malpractice premiums. Some family doctors pay more than $50,000 a year; some high-risk specialists such as surgeons pay more than $200,000.

The law says doctors can go uninsured if they post signs in their offices and promise to pay up to $250,000 per malpractice award, with a maximum of $750,000 per year. If a doctor doesn’t pay, the state can revoke his or her license.

In 2003, legislators moved to lower premiums and get more doctors insured by limiting pain-and-suffering awards to $500,000 in cases of injury or $1 million in cases resulting in death. There’s no limit on payments for medical expenses.

Premiums since have gone down yearly by less than 10 percent; insurer profits climbed to an average of 20 percent in 2006.”

what “tort reform” are you talking about.

What’s the difference in insurer margin in the two states?

Since you got your “reform”, what do you blame the “crisis” on now?

What is “toxic” about the Florida malpractice climate? What are the insurers’ historic claims paid v. premiums collected and profits off the float? Surely Kevin has some statistics before spewing the AMA’s talking points?

From the article, it appears the only thing toxic is physicians’ unwillingness to make sure a strong insurance commissioner is appointed:

“Premiums since have gone down yearly by less than 10 percent; insurer profits climbed to an average of 20 percent in 2006.”

They got their tort “reform” like they wanted, and they’re still crying?

The truth, as the article points out, is that they do it in Florida because of more generous bankruptcy protection than other states. Kevin’s right that we are reaping what we sow. Combine a bunch of greedy doctors who don’t mind filing bankruptcy with a weak medical review board that is loath to pull their licenses, and this is exactly what you get.

After all, it’s not like any doctor is going to warn you against going to see any other physician, no matter how horrible they may be.

Life is full of risks for damages from which we will not be made whole or for which we will not and cannot be compensated. At least this is one for which I am forewarned.