CATO INSTITUTE QUESTIONS LINK BETWEEN MEDICAL MALPRACTICE PAYOUTS AND INSURANCE PREMIUMS . . . In "Defensive Medicine and Disappearing Doctors," Katherine Baicker and Amitabh Chandra find that "when the number or size of malpractice payments rises, there is very little accompanying increase in the malpractice premiums paid by physicians."

The Baicker-Chandra article was first published in the Fall 2005 issue of the Cato Institute's journal Regulation. It's now available online (pdf). Here's more from the article's conclusion:

There is a great deal of public debate about potential reforms of the malpractice system. A closer look at available data suggests that some of the rhetoric surrounding this debate may be misleading. First, increases in malpractice premiums do not seem to be the driving force behind increases in premiums. Second, increases in malpractice costs do not seem to affect the overall size of the physician workforce, although they may affect some subsets of the physician population more severely.

Last year, Walter Olson and Martin Grace raised some questions about some earlier Baicker-Chandra research, but I didn't see any critical commentary of the recent Regulation article. If you know of any, please comment.

Meanwhile, if you're new to the debate, you can view my many other posts about the so-called "medical malpractice insurance crisis" (as well as the accompanying reader comments, some very negative but still appreciated) in my "Tort Reform" and "Tort Reform 2" categories. That's where the fun really is.