Florida's new Chief Financial Officer says in this piece that rapidly rising malpractice insurance premiums are largely because of insurers' practice of undercharging for coverage in previous years:

"In hindsight, rates probably should have gone up about 10 percent a year over the past seven or eight years, and they didn't,'' Gallagher said. ``And when that doesn't happen and should have, you're left with a very large hole, which means we allowed rates over those years to be lower than they should have and created a crisis at this point.''

Gallagher said other factors contribute to medical malpractice problems, including huge losses in the reinsurance market. Reinsurers insure insurance companies as a safety net against catastrophic losses.

Uh-huh.