1,720,964 research outputs found
Can\u27t Settle, Can\u27t Sue: How Congress Stole Tort Remedies From Medicare Beneficiaries
Full text linkIn this article, I show that, as amended, the MSP will likely have unforeseen consequences to the tort system. I start by reviewing the history of Medicare and the forces that led Congress to enact and amend the MSP. With illustration from the classic economic model of litigation, I then show that, not surprisingly, the MSP – as written – makes it more difficult for Medicare beneficiaries to bring and settle individual tort claims. What may be less obvious is that this amendment may have a profound impact in the area of mass tort litigation. If individual parties to a mass tort cannot settle, plaintiffs’ attorneys, who make the litigation decisions in mass torts, may determine that it is not lucrative to include Medicare beneficiaries in mass tort litigation or to bring mass tort litigation at all. This could have several consequences. First, and most obviously, if certain plaintiffs cannot bring claims, they will not be appropriately compensated for their harms. Moreover, if tortfeasors are not made to pay for their tortious conduct, they will not internalize the harms caused and will not take the proper amount of precaution to protect against future harms. Further, if there are no mass tort actions, the Secretary will not have access to the discovery done by private litigation against these mass tort defendants. As such, the Secretary may have a harder time collecting Medicare’s conditional outlays from truly tortious parties. Lastly, I offer a simple means to rectify this complex problem: force the Secretary to use the clear statutory right of subrogation against tortfeasors. Subrogation will not fundamentally change Medicare’s ability to recover its costs from an alleged tortfeasor, but will alleviate the disincentives to settlement in the tort setting
The New Regulatory Imperative for Insurance
Full text linkThis Article addresses emerging gaps in consumer protection. Insurers, like companies in other industries, are revolutionizing their practices with artificial intelligence and big data. Insurers are finding new ways to price risks and policies, tailor coverage, offer advice to purchasers, identify fraud, and sequence the payment of claims. These changes have subverted consumer protections built into current regulatory regimes, and regulators are struggling to adapt. This is not a niche problem. Insurance is a vital part of the U.S. economy: it rakes in over 1.2 trillion dollars in premiums a year; employs more than 2.7 million people; and undergirds transactions as simple as home purchases and as complex as corporate mergers and acquisitions, the multi-trillion-dollar tort system, and a vast system of private risk management and loss avoidance advice. Despite playing these critical roles, the insurance market is surprisingly inefficient. Deep information asymmetries make it difficult for consumers to evaluate the quality of policies and carriers, for insurers to price risks properly, and make it possible for both sides to act opportunistically. Further, behavioral barriers hamper purchasers, who often buy too little or the wrong insurance. And, in some markets, private insurers might not be willing to supply enough insurance because the underlying risks cannot be adequately spread. Insurance regulation is a necessary part of solving these complex market failures. Most of the previous legal scholarship about algorithmic justice has been in the context of information platforms, criminal justice, and employment discrimination. This Article connects to those discussions and expands them in the specific context of insurance. It does so by providing a taxonomy of the changes in the insurance industry, the potential danger to consumers as a result of those changes, the reasons for regulation, and the ways that regulators must adapt to protect individual consumers and the insurance market
Risk Classification’s Big Data (R)evolution
No full textInsurers can no longer ignore the promise that the algorithms driving big data will offer greater predictive accuracy than traditional statistical analysis alone. Big data represents a natural evolutionary advancement of insurers trying to price their products to increase their profits, mitigate additional moral hazard, and better combat adverse selection. But these big data promises are not free. Using big data could lead to inefficient social and private investments, undermine important risk-spreading goals of insurance, and invade policyholder privacy. These dangers are present in any change to risk classification. Using algorithms to classify risk by parsing new and complex data sets raises two additional, unique problems.
First, this machine-driven classification may yield unexpected correlations with risk that unintentionally burden suspect or vulnerable groups with higher prices. The higher rates may not reinforce negative stereotypes and cause dignitary harms, because the algorithms obscure who is being charged more for coverage and for what reason. Nonetheless, there may be reasons to be concerned about which groups are burdened by having to pay more for coverage.
Second, big data raises novel privacy concerns. Insurers classifying risk with big data will harvest and use personal information indirectly, without asking the policyholders for permission. This may cause certain privacy invasions unanticipated by current regulatory regimes. Further, the predictive power of big data may allow insurers to determine personally identifiable information about policyholders without asking them directly
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Regulation by Liability Insurance: From Auto to Lawyers Professional Liability
Full text linkLiability insurers use a variety of tools to address adverse selection and moral hazard in insurance relationships. These tools can act on insureds in a manner that can be understood as regulation. We identify seven categories of such regulatory activities: risk-based pricing, underwriting, contract design, claims management, loss prevention services, research and education, and engagement with public regulators. We describe these activities in general terms and then draw upon prior literature to explore them in the context of five areas of liability and corresponding insurance: shareholder liability, auto liability, gun liability, medical professional liability, and lawyers’ professional liability. The goal is to develop a conceptual framework to guide qualitative research on liability insurance as governance
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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