Medical malpractice reform and insurer claims defense: unintended effects?

In response to recent and past medical malpractice insurance crises, most states have implemented reforms meant to stabilize premiums and coverage availability. The importance of understanding whether these reforms implicitly affect the behavior and incentives of plaintiffs, attorneys, medical providers, and malpractice insurers in the intended way is crucial to policy makers, if they are to achieve their goal. This study specifically examines the effect of reforms on the claims defense efforts of insurers, given that defense expenses account for approximately 30 percent of malpractice premiums. Using state data for the period 1998-2002, we regress claims defense expenses against a variety of reform variables. These include seven tort reforms (noneconomic damage caps, punitive damage limits, attorney fee limits, modified collateral source rule, modified joint and several liability doctrine, mandatory pretrial screening, and statute of limitations) and two government-sponsored insurance mechanisms (joint underwriting associations and patient compensation funds). Claims defense expenses are found to be higher in the presence of noneconomic damage caps, punitive damage limits, and attorney fee limits--an unintended and counterproductive effect of reform--but are lower with mandatory pretrial screening and patient compensation funds.     

Evaluation of the one-step Lumicyano™ used in the visualisation of fingermarks on fabrics

This study consisted of three parts to evaluate the performance of Lumicyano? on a variety of fabrics. One part assessed the impact of dye percentage (8%, 9% and 10%) on visualisation of fingermark detail and luminescent brightness in split grab marks. A 9% dye produced the highest quality detail of grab impressions with least interference from background fluorescence. The second part investigated the optimal relative humidity (RH, 75–84%) for certain fabric types using Lumicyano on split, six-series depletion fingermarks. It was concluded that the recommended RH of 80% remained the ideal cyanoacrylate fuming environment. The final and third part of this study determined the impact of sequential addition of Basic Yellow 40 (BY40) on Lumicyano compared to traditional cyanoacrylate (CA) followed with BY40 application. Results from this study demonstrated that Lumicyano on its own developed fingermarks with superior quality to Lumicyano with sequential addition of BY40 or traditional cyanoacrylate followed by BY40. Inclusion of more fabrics, donors and longer ageing periods should be explored in future studies to determine what frameworks are best for certain types of fabrics.     

Reproductive Governance in Nordeste/Northeast (Juan Solanas, 2005, Argentina/France/Belgium/Spain)

Juan Solanas's 2005 film Nordeste/Northeast problematised maternity by presenting two female characters who conform to cultural or trans-cultural norms of the Global North and South and personify the narratives of transnational trade. As Lynn M. Morgan and Elizabeth F. S. Roberts argue, ‘reproductive governance’ is a useful analytical tool for understanding how political rationalities affect the reproductive lives of women in Latin America and globally. Reproductive governance can also be used as a lens to analyse how contradictions and ambivalences are built into the lived experience of abortion and adoption as the complexity of maternity.