Think you’re paying too much for health insurance? Maybe you should ask a doctor what his insurance bills look like. Malpractice insurance has skyrocketed over the last decade, and the cost for doctors to defend themselves against liability claims is now growing at 17 percent each year. Seventeen percent each year. By comparison, rising gas prices might look downright tame.

InsureMeOnline.com’s role is to show you the largest selection of health insurance policies available so you can choose the best policy for your needs at the best possible price. We’re good at that, and we have no fight to pick with anyone in the industry. But we also have no reason to hide what’s causing the ongoing increase in medical costs from our customers. Take a look at some of these statistics:

• A recent survey by Medical Economics determined that the median medical malpractice premium is now over $12,000 for primary care physicians, and a whopping $28,000 for ob-gyns.
• Between 2000 and 2004, 10 percent of all malpractice claims filed in Florida, Maine, Missouri and Nevada closed with payments in excess of $1 million, according to a U.S. Department of Justice study.
• Jury Verdict Research, an organization that tracks the trends of tort cases through the system, recently reported that the median malpractice jury award is $1,045,000. Even malpractice cases that settle before reaching a jury have a median payout of $1 million.
• Depending on what state you live in, these awards add between $182 and $536 a year to the cost of healthcare for every single man, woman and child.
• Ob-gyns are leaving their field of practice at an alarming rate. The average obstetrician stops practicing at 48, the age once considered to be the mid-point of an ob-gyn’s career.
• The federal government is paying an additional $23.66 billion to $42.59 billion per year as doctors serving Medicare and Medicaid clients practice defensive medicine to reduce their exposure to litigation. Eliminating this waste alone would go a long way towards saving these entitlement programs.

The good news is we’re reaching the crisis point where long-standing and well-vetted proposals may begin to be taken seriously. Ideas like “health courts,” a forum for expediting medical malpractice cases without lawyers taking the top 1/3 of the payout, have recently gathered steam. A few years out, we may all see our health insurance premiums plunge. But in the meantime it’s up to each of us individually to get the best health care we can for our dollar, and InsureMeOnline.com is ready to assist. Let us show you the array of policies we have for you right now, at no cost.