Anthony Weiner: “first of all, as the debate begins, let us put some myths to rest. We are going to hear a great deal of references to…”

“first of all, as the debate begins, let us put some myths to rest. We are going to hear a great deal of references to the California law that put in a cap. Since 1998, premiums have gone up 37 percent in California. Nationally they have gone up about 6 percent. So you keep talking about how great that has worked, but frankly it has not. In Florida where they also have a cap, and there are plenty of places around the country that do, they have a $450,000 cap that was put in the last time that suddenly we had an insurance crisis in this country in 1985, 1986. What happened then? Oh, yeah, insurance companies lost a lot of money in the stock market then, too, so that was the last crisis that we had. At the time Florida, they were smart, they asked insurance companies to report back to them the effect of the law. Aetna Casualty reported back. St. Paul, then the largest malpractice insurer, reported back; and in the words of St. Paul they said, quote, ``The new limits will produce little or no savings to the tort system as it pertains to medical malpractice.'' So feel free to keep talking about the examples that we have, but I think that you will find that when push comes to shove, the precedent is that these caps do not lower premiums. They do not lower premiums.”