Lawyers Insurance

Lawyers Insurance enjoyed another successful year in 2015 providing a full suite of insurance products to meet the needs of North Carolina lawyers as the endorsed insurance agency of the North Carolina Bar Association.

One of the great challenges and opportunities for the future lies in the field of healthcare. Health coverage, through administration of the North Carolina Bar Association Health Benefit Trust, is the primary endeavor of Lawyers Insurance. Both before and after implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the cost of health coverage continues to increase at a higher rate than inflation.

Much of this recent increase has been driven by pharmacy costs, particularly specialty medication. An unfortunate consequence of the legal and regulatory environment surrounding the approval of new medications and the granting of exclusivity on both old and new medications, is that there are currently no real checks on the costs of medications, either market-based or regulatory. Therefore, pharmaceutical companies have extraordinary pricing power.

We are in an age of incredible advancement in the pharmaceutical arena. Diseases from diabetes to cancer may be cured or much more easily managed through medication. This should ultimately have the effect of lowering overall health costs, if the challenge of proper oversight and market based reforms are achieved.