Following is the fifth installment of our series on the Canadian Medical Protection Association.
The last article hit a nerve. A lawyer posted the following comment: “I am a plaintiff medical malpractice lawyer from a small town (Cambridge, Ont.) who acts for only patients as against the behemoth Law firms which the CMPA hires. I completely agree with your assessment of how the Defense acts. I am also a member of The Holland group, a think tank for medical malpractice cases, and have been since it’s inception and only now after over a hundred meetings, have we come up with ”best practices”. The members of the Group are both from the Defense side and the Plaintiff side. These “best practices” are a typed up version of what I have been doing for 35 years. The CMPA lawyers on instructions from the CMPA (I assume) may talk the talk in the group but on the street, it is the same old shit of delay delay and scorched earth. Earlier resolution of obvious cases of merit would save all money and compensate the Plaintiffs so they can try and lead a better life earlier than is now and probably forever a broken system of compensation. Good article right on the nuts. PMM”
The latest CMPA financial statement figures from 2016 show membership revenues of $566.3 million. You paid most of that. When you add in another $203.8 million from investment income, that makes the total revenue $770.1 million for that year alone. That’s just the revenue; that doesn’t count their assets in land and buildings. Not bad for a non-profit corporation. I might start one myself if the province will subsidize it and let me set my own rates, as noted in the 2016 CMPA financial statement:
“The 2016 Membership fees in Quebec were arrived at as per the Memorandum of Understanding between the Association, the Fédération des médecins spécialistes du Québec, the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec, and the Government of Quebec. The 2016 membership fees in Ontario and the Rest of Canada were determined by the Association.”
At the CMPA’s inception in 1901, the flat fee for membership was $2.50 annually. By 1976, it was $200 a year. Provincial subsidization in Ontario began at the rate of 50% in 1978 and by 1981 the fees had increased to $350. In 1984, the CMPA began charging differential fees as determined by specialty and 1986 saw another significant jump to an average fee of $1,238. Five years later, it had doubled. By the year 2000, the average fee was $3,929. And it gets worse. This year, the unweighted average fee is triple that of 2000 at $11,338. The general rate of inflation for the period 1979 through 2017 was 235%. Shocking? Not compared to the CMPA rate increase of 6,156.5% for the same period. Had the CMPA fees kept pace with inflation, the 2017 fee would have been $670. But then, why limit your increases if you can enjoy a feeding frenzy at the public trough?
Let’s put the fee impact into perspective, shall we? The 2016 Canadian Institute for Health Information reports that a doctor’s earnings vary based on doctors’ specialties. Family physicians make about $271,000 while medical specialists make about $338,000 and surgical specialists earn $446,000. So the average gross pay for a doctor sits at $339,000. That makes the current average CMPA fee 3.3% of the average gross pay.
Why do we have to subsidize this? Hands up — how many of you mere mortals make as much money as a doctor? What percentage of your income goes to mandatory insurance? How many of you get subsidized from the province for the insurance that you are required to get for your car or your house? How many businesses are subsidized for their liability insurance premiums? How many employers are getting subsidized for the crippling WSIB fees? That’s what I thought.
CMPA does pay out claims in cases so blatant and so egregious that there’s just no hope of even their ruthless lawyers winning the case. But they don’t pay out as much in claims as they do on fees for lawyers and expert witnesses, which is entirely consistent with their strategy of seeking to crush anyone bringing suit against a doctor. They even brag about it.
The last article in the series “Your Doctor Probably Isn’t Insured” will be published next Tuesday.
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