Saturday, November 19, 2011

How do doctors actually pay for liability insurance?

On studentdoc.com, the salary survey stated that the average OB/GYN made roughly $238000 a year, but some sites I have looked at show that they also pay $50000 a year (in florida, that rises to $100000) for malpractice insurance. Even for other practices, such as pediatrics and internal medicine, the rate is usually $30000+. This is a huge amount of money and really, after paying student loans, mortgages, taxes, and etc, how much money do doctors actually take home? Surely not all doctors actually pay for their premiums.


Specifically, how much would a pediatric surgeon pay in malpractice insurance in California or Illinois? Just some food for thought.

How do doctors actually pay for liability insurance?
What if you didn't pay for insurance (ie didn't have insurance) and somebody won a million dollar lawsuit againist you. You'd have to pay the money yourself (it may bankrupt you). Doctors pay so much for insurance because they get sued alot and sometimes have to pay millions of dollars lawsuits. I'm sure many of these verdicts are justified, but some probably are not. Anyhow, thats the way the system works.





Another point - the docotrs do pay these costs but probably pretty much pass the costs on to their patients. So if the doctor being payed 238K has to pay 50K in insurance I'll bet if their insurance cost were only 20K then their salary would only be around 208K. If they all had to pay less they'd have to lower their salaries to be competitive with other doctors doing the same thing.


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