You may remember Professor Rodwin and I debating his paper on Point of Law; that debate has spilled over onto the pages of the November/December issue of Health Affairs, which published a short letter from me criticizing the Rodwin study and a muddying response from the authors:
Marc Rodwin and colleagues’ highly publicized conclusion that Massachusetts does not have a malpractice insurance crisis (May/Jun 08) is not supported by the data in their paper.
First, the sole finding supporting the conclusion, that malpractice insurance rates declined 1 percent from 1990 to 2005, is an artifact of the Simpson Paradox. Rates for low-risk doctors increased 14 percent; rates for high-risk doctors increased 45 percent. The mean decreased entirely because the mix of doctors changed, and the percentage of insured doctors with expensive high-risk policies declined substantially…
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