For those who are having difficulty finding the USLCA (United States Lactation Consultant Association) website, the easiest way is to go to www.ilca.org, and click the sixth button down under 'What's New at ILCA." Once at USLCA, you will find the button for "liability insurance" along the top bar. As for professional liability insurance rates: insurance companies are in the simple business of pulling in more money (in premiums) than they pay-out (in claims or settlements). Example: ten of us pay $100/year for car insurance. The insurance company now has $1000. One of us gets into a fender bender requiring $300 to repair. The insurance company can pay out the $300 and still make a profit this year. But what if five of us got into fender benders? That is $1500 worth of pay-outs. The insurance company would still give each of us our $300. How? The minute they collected the $1000 pot, they started to invest the money to make it grow. BUT -- you can be absolutely assured that NEXT year our annual premiums would rise from $100 to something like $200. Insurance isl just an odds-hedging venture. As soon as the pool of insured people start to statistically show that they are getting into more fender-benders, the insurance execs pull out their calculators to figure out how much more they need to charge to make those increased pay-outs, an still make a profit. Now, in real life, the calculations are extraordinarily complex. That is why you'll pay more for car insurance in one location over another: they take into account how many dirvers there are; how often the different ages and sex groups get into accidents; how much it costs to get cars fixed in that region; etc etc etc The same is true for professional liability insurance. Some states or cities have more lawsuits, and more pay-outs. The folks contributing to that pool will pay higher premiums. I don't think there has been a surge in lawsuits against IBCLCs specifically -- but there is, generally speaking, an awful lot of suing and paying-out going on here in the US of A. Tactically, when there is a medical malpractice suit, the attorneys are suing *everyone* who ever came within a ten-foot circle of the injured person. Nurses, docs, IBCLCs and candy-stripers are all named in the initial suit. It costs the insurance company money to hire a lawyer to go into court and tell the judge that the IBCLC has no business being in the lawsuit. (It costs even more to defend the IBCLC against legitimate claims.) Liz Brooks, JD, IBCLC (ILCA Secy 2005-08 and USLCA member) Wyndmoor, PA, USA _________________________________________________________________ Find what you need at prices you’ll love. Compare products and save at MSN® Shopping. http://shopping.msn.com/default/shp/?ptnrid=37,ptnrdata=24102&tcode=T001MSN20A0701 *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html Mail all commands to [log in to unmask] To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or [log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet or ([log in to unmask]) To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]