INSURANCE

Cost of Malpractice Insurance Stays Level: Doctors and hospitals paid $4.13 billion in malpractice insurance premiums last year, up 1.6% from the 1991 level and about even with the totals for the four years before that, two consumer groups reported. J. Robert Hunter, president of the National Insurance Consumer Organization, said the premiums came to less than one half of 1% of total U.S. health care costs, demonstrating that malpractice insurance costs are a negligible problem for the system. NICO and the consumer group Public Citizen also noted that insurers reaped pretax profits of 23.6% on malpractice insurance sales, a percentage Hunter called excessive.