INSURANCE

But the number of autopsies in hospitals has sharply declined in recent years. Why risk a malpractice suit that has been made the fashion by "consumer advocates," judicial activists and the corporation baiters? They have not just increased your medical bill by forcing doctors to pay up to $100,000/year for malpractice insurance; they are obstructing your doctor's learning process.

And there is more. The vaccine industry has been devastated by the activists. Damages for side effects have scared many companies out of the market. There remains only one retailer of the whooping cough vaccine, and its price has recently doubled due to mushrooming legal costs.

These are some of the facts one learns in studying the liability insurance business in connection with Price-Anderson. Reports like "The role of the Price-Anderson Act in the Contemporary Tort System" by Huber, McCarthy and Mills (only the summary is available from AIF, 7101 Wisonsin Ave., Bethesda, MD 20814) make some excellent points in favor of keeping the liability limit, but they have not persuaded me, for they fail to make a crucial distinction. There is the moral obligation and legal responsibility for damage I have inflicted on others, and there is my physical ability to compensate them. There can be no justifiable limit on the former; there must be a finite premium for finite coverage to enable me to make good in all reasonably probable contingencies.

For the nuclear industry, the first means no liability limit, and the second no increase in either premia or coverage, especially not one that would discriminate in favor of far more dangerous and far less insured energy sources. The principle is simple: no breaks, no persecution.