Law is our main system of official blame; it is how we officially blame people for things. So it is a pretty big deal that, over the last few centuries, changes to law have induced big changes in who officially blames who for most things that go wrong. These changes may be having big bad effects.
As a matter of public policy, you can't insure against intentional torts - acts done with the deliberate intent to hurt somebody. If I assault someone, my insurance doesn't have to pay their medical bills.
Also, life insurance is actually required by law to cover suicide if the policy is over two years old.
You are mostly correct. A part of the larger payouts has to do with medical expenses. A patient that would previously die now lives longer (for example, what we call "bad baby" cases). The "Wrongful Birth" cause of action is probably the only legal change that I can think that has contributed to payouts.
In the past, property owners could file nuisance torts against thier neighbors for annoying property infringements (noise, emissions, etc) Now, land use and zoning law has created a big (nearly blameless) entity in the government which attempts to “resolve” land use disputes by central preemptive decision-making.I believe this situation should be reversed and land owners should be made responsible to their neighbors for their negative externalities, through civil law.
There are three main components to the increasing complexity of the law argument:
1) The records we have of early legal systems widely report self-representation. For example, Livy reports in his History of Rome the different methods of trial, and the chief variation between them is the availability of an appeal; people argued for themselves, rather than lawyers. It is now effectively a requirement to have a specially trained expert (the lawyer) undertake any kind of legal action; people have the right to do it themselves, but this is almost universally considered a bad move. Things that require experts are more complex than things that don't.
2) There is nothing Hammurabi had to deal with in his laws that we do not have to deal with, or at least an equivalent. Hammurabi did not have to deal with allocating radio waves, or airspace, or who owns the data stored on servers. Therefore even if all laws are equally simple, our legal code is more complex because there are more things about which there are laws.
3) We observe that new laws are written all the time, but it is not the case that for every new law an old one is removed. Therefore even if we hold the number of things the law must cover constant, our legal code grows more complex over time because new laws continue to accumulate.
The growth of malpractice payouts has nothing to do with the law, as far as I can see. It is a civil matter. The issue is that over the past 50 years or so, jurors have been more and more willing to convict for malpractice, and consequently those who experience "bad stuff" after getting medical treatment have become more and more willing to sue. I am not aware of any change in law that has enabled this over the years. I'm not a lawyer and I could be wrong, but if you know of any such legal changes that have led to this, I'd be curious to hear about them.
This trend has caused an increase in the cost of malpractice insurance. And as far as I can see, the institution of a vouching system would, to the same extent, raise the the ante that the voucher would require of the vouchee. Given the same conviction mechanism, the outcome would be the same.
I don't doubt your credentials and I do like the concept. I was telling people about exactly because I think that you make valuable proposals. Nonetheless the way FIB was presented by you made it hard for me to counter the immediate and detailed counter-argument from someone from the field.
I have published in the field of econ theory models of insurance, so I'm quite well informed about what can and can't be insured economically. What the law allows, or what products are currently offered are quite different questions from what is possible.
The most similar example I can think of is that life insurance usually does not pay out in cases of suicide.
That being said, medical insurance still works when we do unhealthy or risky things like eat poorly or play contact sports; our premiums just go up. Those are deliberate.
Malpractice insurance works, and that is strictly for the case of deliberate actions which are bad.
Unless there is some narrow definition of deliberate which I am missing.
I were relaying comments from an Actuary here but googling "uninsurable" finds things like these that seem to support the point at least in practice even if maybe not in theory:
Its just not true that deliberate acts can't be insured. Vouching has ancient roots, and much of it is re deliberate acts. You can obviously insure against the deliberate acts of others, and also your future acts, about which you are uncertain.
As a matter of public policy, you can't insure against intentional torts - acts done with the deliberate intent to hurt somebody. If I assault someone, my insurance doesn't have to pay their medical bills.
Also, life insurance is actually required by law to cover suicide if the policy is over two years old.
You are mostly correct. A part of the larger payouts has to do with medical expenses. A patient that would previously die now lives longer (for example, what we call "bad baby" cases). The "Wrongful Birth" cause of action is probably the only legal change that I can think that has contributed to payouts.
Yeah, I expect they would provide lawyers.
" And to avoid having to pay such costs, the insurer would take steps to ensure that the people they insure don't commit such acts."
or take steps to ensure that the people they insure don't get caught/convicted when they commit such acts.
In the past, property owners could file nuisance torts against thier neighbors for annoying property infringements (noise, emissions, etc) Now, land use and zoning law has created a big (nearly blameless) entity in the government which attempts to “resolve” land use disputes by central preemptive decision-making.I believe this situation should be reversed and land owners should be made responsible to their neighbors for their negative externalities, through civil law.
There are three main components to the increasing complexity of the law argument:
1) The records we have of early legal systems widely report self-representation. For example, Livy reports in his History of Rome the different methods of trial, and the chief variation between them is the availability of an appeal; people argued for themselves, rather than lawyers. It is now effectively a requirement to have a specially trained expert (the lawyer) undertake any kind of legal action; people have the right to do it themselves, but this is almost universally considered a bad move. Things that require experts are more complex than things that don't.
2) There is nothing Hammurabi had to deal with in his laws that we do not have to deal with, or at least an equivalent. Hammurabi did not have to deal with allocating radio waves, or airspace, or who owns the data stored on servers. Therefore even if all laws are equally simple, our legal code is more complex because there are more things about which there are laws.
3) We observe that new laws are written all the time, but it is not the case that for every new law an old one is removed. Therefore even if we hold the number of things the law must cover constant, our legal code grows more complex over time because new laws continue to accumulate.
The growth of malpractice payouts has nothing to do with the law, as far as I can see. It is a civil matter. The issue is that over the past 50 years or so, jurors have been more and more willing to convict for malpractice, and consequently those who experience "bad stuff" after getting medical treatment have become more and more willing to sue. I am not aware of any change in law that has enabled this over the years. I'm not a lawyer and I could be wrong, but if you know of any such legal changes that have led to this, I'd be curious to hear about them.
This trend has caused an increase in the cost of malpractice insurance. And as far as I can see, the institution of a vouching system would, to the same extent, raise the the ante that the voucher would require of the vouchee. Given the same conviction mechanism, the outcome would be the same.
I'd be happy to discuss this with someone who presents themselves as an expert who disagrees with me.
I don't doubt your credentials and I do like the concept. I was telling people about exactly because I think that you make valuable proposals. Nonetheless the way FIB was presented by you made it hard for me to counter the immediate and detailed counter-argument from someone from the field.
I have published in the field of econ theory models of insurance, so I'm quite well informed about what can and can't be insured economically. What the law allows, or what products are currently offered are quite different questions from what is possible.
The most similar example I can think of is that life insurance usually does not pay out in cases of suicide.
That being said, medical insurance still works when we do unhealthy or risky things like eat poorly or play contact sports; our premiums just go up. Those are deliberate.
Malpractice insurance works, and that is strictly for the case of deliberate actions which are bad.
Unless there is some narrow definition of deliberate which I am missing.
I were relaying comments from an Actuary here but googling "uninsurable" finds things like these that seem to support the point at least in practice even if maybe not in theory:
https://www.investordaily.c...
https://www.uibk.ac.at/faku...
https://link.springer.com/c...
https://www.jstor.org/stabl...
And your evidence for that is?
Interesting hypothesis. Is there evidence for it?
Insurers seem to disagree.
Its just not true that deliberate acts can't be insured. Vouching has ancient roots, and much of it is re deliberate acts. You can obviously insure against the deliberate acts of others, and also your future acts, about which you are uncertain.