Health insurance premiums next year are going up as much as 30 percent, even if the proposed federal pay freeze goes through. How do you pay for 2011 health costs on a 2010 salary?
Health insurance expert Walton Francis says you can save $1,000 to $2,000 next year by picking the best health plan during this year’s open season which ends Dec. 13.
Read more: federalnewsradio.com.
Managed care expert witnesses may opine on liability insurance, HMOs, and related issues. The Physicians Insurers Association Research Department reviews data, issues, and policies concerning the medical professional liability insurance industry to produce helpful resources.
Semi-annually, the PIAA analyzes data captured by the PIAA Data Sharing Project to develop a national overview of claim trends, and to identify areas of practice most vulnerable to assertions about liability. The Association uses the data gleaned from those reports to compose relevant white papers and major studies. The PIAA also works with other associations and medical society groups in joint research projects aimed at improving the delivery of healthcare and reducing practitioner liability.
Read more: piaa.us.
Insurance regulation expert witnesses may write reports and opine on insurance claims, insurance business customs and practices, and related topics. Here, the American Insurance Association defines SAP:
Statutory Accounting Principle (SAP): Those principles required by state insurance laws followed by an insurance company when submitting its financial statements to the various state insurance departments. Such principles differ from Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) in some important respects. For example, SAP requires that expenses must be recorded immediately and cannot be deferred to track with premiums as they are earned and taken into revenue.
Insurance practices expert witnesses may write reports and opine on insurance claims, insurance coverage, casualty insurance, and related topics. Here, the American Insurance Association defines casualty insurance:
Insurance primarily concerned with the legal liability for losses caused by injury to persons or damage to property of others. Also includes, among other coverages: automobile, workers’ compensation, employers’ liability, general liability, plate glass, theft and personal liability. It excludes life, fire and marine insurance.
Was an oral surgeon at fault for the massive stroke his patient suffered after an 8-tooth extraction under local anesthesia at Philadelphia Veterans’ Administration Medical Center in September 2007? A federal court will take up that question now that a judge has dismissed the U.S. government’s motions to exclude the plaintiff’s expert witnesses from testifying in the malpractice case. District Judge William Yohn denied the defendants’ motions on Nov. 10, allowing the malpractice suit to proceed with the testimony from the plaintiff’s medical malpractice expert witnesses.
Read more: outpatientsurgery.net.
A jury may decide who caused a serious injury crash on Deerfield Road last year after an accident reconstruction expert witness claimed a Lenawee County, MI, Sheriff’s Department investigation got it backwards.
A lawsuit over the crash that left 82-year-old Elmer Johnson near death was moved toward trial this week after a motion to dismiss it was rejected by Lenawee County Circuit Judge Margaret M.S. Noe. Defense attorneys argued a sheriff’s department report left no doubt that Johnson was at fault while attorney Courtney Morgan of Dearborn argued that expert opinion and physical evidence back up the Johnson claim that Joshua Gates, 27, was the one who ran the stop sign.
Read more: lenconnect.com.
In How we created an almost paperless real estate expert office, real estate expert witness Merrie Turner Lightner writes:
In truth, the “paperless office” was just another dot.com fantasy. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t cut down on our paper use, and there’s never been a better time to Green your office. Today, the Internet, cloud computing, better software and hardware and lower costs have aligned to help our business reduce our paper-print on the world, while improving our work product. Case-in-point: With 26 years as a professional property manager, I expanded my business to serve as an expert witness in real estate disputes over a decade ago. To be involved in litigation is to swim in a pool of paper.
One day, a delivery truck swamped our office with box-loads of evidence. With sagging office floors and no empty filing cabinets within sight, we needed to apply the technologies we had used to improve our property management operation to my expert witness work. And we needed to make it accessible to outside attorneys and other experts.
Collision analysis expert witness A. Zhukov, Ph.D., describes what type of stored data may be retrieved in a “black box” using Vetronix Crash Data Retrieval Tool (CDR Tool).
The CDR Tool is capable of harvesting information from vehicle’s SDM and RCM. The device records data on a laptop PC which could later be transferred to any other device, if needed. Recorded data depends on vehicle make, model and year. The following data is typical of what is found on a newer GM vehicle:
* Vehicle speed ( 5 seconds before impact )
In Chest Pain & Medical Malpractice, medical malpractice expert witness Barry Gustin, M.D. writes:
As you can see, the evaluation of chest pain is often highly subjective and imperfect. The differential diagnosis of chest pain alone (approximately 20 common and 15 not so common entities) is enough to dazzle and amaze any attorney as he/she strives to understand the facts of the case. It is no surprising that 20% of malpractice dollar losses by emergency physicians in the US involve the diagnosis and management of patients with acute chest pain.
The only way to make sense of any medical case, especially the complex one, is to have a knowledgeable physician review it an give you the medical insight and understanding you seek.
Construction Accident Reconstruction, 2d edition, by Calvin Zemsky, P.E., and Jon R. Abele Esq, contains data and statistics about fatal and non-fatal construction accidents, OSHA Rules and Regulations, Life/Safety Codes and discussions of many construction accident investigations.
Litigation relating to construction site accidents appear on the court dockets of every judicial district throughout the country. The number of lawsuits filed because of accidents has grown year after year. Until now there has been no single place for a person to obtain the information of what a forensic engineer / accident reconstruction expert witness does when reconstructing an accident. This book, now in its second edition, fills that void. It has been updated and expanded throughout by Jon Abele, Esq. It also allows attorneys to learn the basics of forensic engineering while providing guidance to accident reconstructionists on how to conduct an investigation into a construction worksite accident.
