In jurisdictions that have passed "tort reform", such as Texas, there has been no decrease in insurance costs. What this so-called "citizens movement" amounts to is this: a brigade of useful idiots for the insurance industry, which doesn't like lawsuits from proles cutting into their bottom line, but does like to charge ever-increasing premiums.

Not only are socially significant lawsuits like malpractice and product liability a small fraction of the legal picture but numerous studies show that capping damages doesn’t affect insuance premiums. One survey examined insurance rates between 1985 and 1998, then ranked the states according to the severity of their restrictions on lawsuits. Increased severity did not produce lower rates. In Texas, where malpractice filings dropped 20 percent in the nine years before Proposition 12, the liability picture has been little improved by its passage. About a third of doctors will see a decrease of 12 percent—after cumulative increases of 147 percent. The rest will either get no relief or double-digit increases.

According to J. Robert Hunter, Federal Insurance Administrator under Presidents Ford and Carter, caps don’t work because liability rates reflect not litigation costs but the insurance industry’s own practices. During good times, insurers write policies even for the worst risks to generate cash for investment. When the stock market tanks, rates climb steeply to cover losses. The current liability crisis, Hunter notes, coincided with the market downturn that began in the summer of 2001. And since the insurance cycle is international, the “hard market” also drove up premiums in Canada, Australia and France. “And those countries have totally different legal systems,” Hunter says.

In short, everything this author writes here is a lie.