“Senior care insurance costs double over a decade with steepest risks for SNFs,” by Kimberly Marselas and Kimberly Bonvissuto, McKnights LTC News
“The average payment for senior care liability claims doubled in the decade ending in 2024, with skilled nursing and other higher-acuity settings facing the highest increases. Liberty Mutual highlighted courtroom tactics as one reason for the steep rise in its recent 2025 senior care claims study. ‘Factors contributing to the increase in average indemnity payments include legal system abuse and plaintiffs’ counsel use of reptile theory courtroom tactics to inflame the jury,’ the report noted. ‘By focusing on the providers’ chronic understaffing and payment of low employee wages, plaintiffs claim gross negligence in an effort to circumvent damage caps.’”
LTC Comment, Stephen A. Moses, President, Center for Long-Term Care Reform:
It is sad to see this problem coming forward again. Twenty years ago I saw it up close. I was an expert witness in nursing home abuse cases and read hundreds of case records and depositions in such cases. The tactics of plaintiff’s lawyers were disgusting using the same boilerplate claims of egregious abuse in case after case. Reptilian behavior indeed. In those days, highway billboards invited families to claim abuse and seek legal representation. This problem seemed to abate but apparently is haunting the LTC service delivery profession again.