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Physicians get insurance rate relief

ALBANY — New York’s physicians will get a reprieve from soaring medical malpractice insurance rates.

On Thursday, Gov. David A. Paterson signed legislation to put a one-year moratorium on malpractice insurance rate hikes. The measure is an attempt to both give doctors relief from escalating rates and to make time to forge a longer-term solution to continuing rate increases.

The measure “will freeze medical malpractice premium rates for physicians and suspend an anticipated surcharge until June 30, 2009,” according to a Friday press release from the Governor’s Office. “Without this legislation, many physicians would have seen as much as a 30 percent increase in rates.”

“I want to thank the Legislature for stabilizing malpractice rates for the short term, thereby ensuring that our doctors can continue to provide quality care in New York without getting suffocated by more back breaking fiscal burdens,” Paterson said in the release. “However, our work is now cut out for us, and we remain committed to creating comprehensive and meaningful medical malpractice reform.”

The bill is designed to keep rates stabilized as lawmakers work on reforms to relieve premium pressure on doctors, improve patient safety and calm the medical malpractice market.

“The Insurance Department did not levy the surcharges or raise the rates as would have been required by law and by the insurance companies’ financial condition in hopes of reform,” said Eric R. Dinallo, superintendent of the state Insurance Department. “While comprehensive reform has not yet been achieved, much groundwork is being laid.

“We will continue to work with the Legislature, the medical community and the lawyers to achieve meaningful reform to reduce costs, reduce the number of people injured by malpractice, protect those who are injured, improve the financial health of the insurance companies and create a competitive market for medical malpractice insurance,” he concluded.

Dinallo also chairs the state’s Medical Malpractice Liability Task Force.

Lawmakers are hopeful that such reforms can be enacted during the next regular Legislative session, which begins in January 2009.

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