Douglas Vatter is a self-professed "insurance guy" who agrees that pain and suffering caps are wrong. He also maintains that carriers are losing money, and that this latest tort limitation effort is all about minimizing the unpredictability in insurance payouts. He says that the lawyers' [and the clients, I presume] best bet is to find a stabilizing solution, or else they will get cut out of or cut back in the equation.

If you look a couple of posts down, you will find the link to a Business Week op-ed, making a convincing case that the unpredictability in malpractice payouts is chimerical. If the amounts of settlements are relatively stable, i.e., growing at the same rate as medical costs, and if there is no explosion of new filings [and there isn't], then where's the unpredictability? Douglas V. thinks the data points to a huge number of pending claims that are over 10 years old. If the cases are over 10 years old, at least in my experience, then they aren't very good cases, or they are closed without payment and not notated correctly. Either way, there is not likely to be a big surge in payouts due to these ancient matters.