If the actuaries are worried
Oh you mean it’s malpractice? Huh.
fter Iowa lawmakers passed a ban on gender-affirming care for minors in March, managers of an LGBTQ+ health clinic located just across the state line in Moline, Illinois, decided to start offering that care.
The added services would provide care to patients who live in largely rural eastern Iowa, including some of the hundreds previously treated at a University of Iowa clinic, saving them half-day drives to clinics in larger cities like Chicago and Minneapolis.
By June, The Project of the Quad Cities, as the Illinois clinic is called, had hired a provider who specializes in transgender health care. So, Andy Rowe, The Project’s health care operations director, called the clinic’s insurance broker to see about getting the new provider added to the nonprofit’s malpractice policy.
“I didn’t anticipate that it was going to be a big deal,” Rowe said. Then the insurance carriers’ quotes came. The first one specifically excluded gender-affirming care for minors. The next response was the same. And the one after that. By early November, more than a dozen malpractice insurers had declined to offer the clinic a policy.
Gee I wonder why.
Not really. The people whose job it is to think about risk and profit and lawsuits are not going to be bowled over by soaring rhetoric about “authentic selves” nor are they going to be intimidated by shouty “activists” on Twitter.
Nearly half the states have banned medication or surgical treatment for transgender youth. Independent clinics and medical practices located in states where such care is either allowed or protected have moved to fill that void for patients commuting or relocating across state lines. But as the risk of litigation rises for clinics, obtaining malpractice insurance on the commercial marketplace has become a quiet barrier to offering care, even in states with legal protections for health care for trans people.
See journalists are still as stupid about this as the activists they’re trying to impress. Actuaries are probably less likely to see mutilation as “health care” even for trans people.
In extreme cases, lawmakers have deployed malpractice insurance regulations against gender-affirming care in states where courts have slowed or blocked anti-trans legislation.
Is the legislation “anti-trans”? Or is it anti-reckless haste to mutilate teenagers in the belief that they were born in the wrong body?
Five months after starting his search for malpractice insurance, Rowe said, he received a quote for a policy that would allow The Project to treat trans youth. That’s when he realized finding a policy was only the first hurdle. He expected the coverage to cost $8,000 to $10,000 a year, but he was quoted $50,000.
Gee, just imagine, you have to pay a lot for insurance when you’re mutilating children on the grounds that they’re the opposite sex of their own bodies.
I was wondering where the actuaries had been all this time!
I think actuaries operate on looking at financial risks, yes? So that suggests they think that former patients will start winning payouts, settlements, court cases. This is not necessarily the same thing as knowing that removing a teenage girl’s healthy breasts is a bad idea ethically, or medically. It’s also quite the turnaround, since I’m sure that Scott Newgent was unable to find a lawyer to sue for malpractice, despite having definitely been the victim of malpractice (on the face of it, at least, obviously a court and jury never got a chance to decide).
My friend’s daughter once adopted a pit bull — and then tried to find an apartment. The resulting frustration turned her into a Pit Bull activist, convinced that only prejudice, ignorance, and hate lay behind the breed’s bad reputation. They were no more dangerous than other dogs, she had the anecdotes and heartfelt arguments to prove it.
My husband was in property/casualty insurance. They have the statistics to prove otherwise. Actuaries don’t care about prejudice, rumors, sentiment, or heartfelt stories. Homeowner policies regularly had larger losses from owners with pit bulls across the board — meaning nice family pets as well as warehouse guard dogs. Sure, many were harmless and loving. But look at the numbers. This is real money they’re supposed to risk.
Same situation. “There’s hardly any regret! And it’s safe! Standard of care! Not experimental at all!”
Uh huh.
No, indeed it’s not the same at all, but given that the right reasons fall on deaf ears at best and get people metaphorically beaten up at worst, it’s a glimmer of light.
Sastra,
The core problem there is that pit bull ownership is a statistically significant indicator of an idiot. Not really a dog problem, more of a people problem. Cocker spaniels are far more vicious and prone to attacking people. But an actuary can live with those consequences, and nobody buys a cocker spaniel they have no idea how to handle and train because they want to look tough. So you have a consequence bias, and a sample bias. Stupid people get a disproportionate percentage of the pit bull population, and when something goes wrong with an animal with that kind of bite strength, the consequences are serious.
But in both cases, the actuaries are following the numbers. It doesn’t take too many malpractice suits from drugged up transition consent and minimal consultation to eat up a $50k premium.
With apologies to any actuaries who are reading, I couldn’t help being reminded of the conclusion of H G Wells’ The War of the Worlds:
…scattered about it, some in their overturned war-machines, some in the now rigid handling-machines, and a dozen of them stark and silent and laid in a row, were the Martians—dead!—slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared; slain as the red weed was being slain; slain, after all man’s devices had failed, by the humblest things that God, in his wisdom, has put upon this earth.
It’s funny how willing people are to come down on the side of nature based on statistical outcomes when it comes to dogs.
I encounter that a lot, as my older dog is a doberman. This is a dog so innocent and ignorant of any concept of threat that immediately after my brother and I pried another dog’s jaws off his ear, he went around and tried to sniff and make friends.
Has the avalanche of malpractice suits really begun? I don’t see it out in the nooz world.
They are around.
https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/michelle-zacchigna-ontario-detransitioner-sues-doctors#:~:text=An%20Ontario%20detransitioning%20woman%20who,an%20irreversible%20journey%20she%20regrets.
If you break it down, that clinic was expecting an $8k premium, and saw a $50k premium. Call it a $42k ‘transgender service’ premium.
If just one case goes to trial, that premium is gone. One $250k settlement per clinic per year, and the underwriter is so far underwater their next career is selling used cars. Actuaries don’t make their living by trying to put the shit back in the horse.
Another good punchline.