Opinion ID: 2508967
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: 1. Public policy should allow the preservation of a plaintiff's medical records.

Text: My first and greatest concern is a public policy problem that the majority opinion has not fully considered, and it is one that affects everyone: higher insurance costs. Obviously, it will be expensive for insurance companies to catalogue the medical records collected in every lawsuit, and expensive to later make sure that every archived insurance file is scraped clean of any medical records or summaries. But I anticipate there will be even greater expenses in the future, in the form of new lawsuits: when plaintiffs' lawyers discover a copy of a medical record buried in an insurance company's archivesa record that should have been purgedthere is sure to be a new round of lawsuits looking for more compensation. More importantly, the insurance industry should be allowed to hold down its costs by maintaining data banks of medical records to identify malingerers and cheaters and double-dippers. Adjusters settling personal injury claims prior to a lawsuit should have access to the claimant's complete prior medical history. Experience has taught insurance companies that a reliable data bank is quicker and more thorough than asking a claimant to produce all of his/her past medical history (particularly when a claimant improperly wants newly compensated for an old injury). So long as medical records that are held by the insurance industry are not being abused, the industry should be able to honestly and thoroughly judge the value of potential lawsuits with complete information.