MD. WORKS ON MED-MAL FUND:

Maryland doctors, insurers and lawmakers are working to contain the cost of medical malpractice insurance, which medical professionals say is driving some doctors out of business and leaving residents without access to health care. Insurance industry leaders presented a plan to Maryland House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel) and to Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who has said is “willing to look at any idea that leads to a bottom-line result.” A state Senate commission also met in Annapolis on the issue, which gained prominence last fall when the state’s largest malpractice insurer, Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society of Maryland, raised premiums 28 percent. In the past two years, claims paid by Medical Mutual jumped from $49.5 million in 2001 to more than $73 million in the first 10 months of last year, according to David L. Murray, Medical Mutual’s president. Busch called the insurance industry’s plan “a stopgap measure” that would call on the state to assume the costs if malpractice judgments rise so much that insurers cannot afford to keep rates steady. Busch said the plan would rely in part on a fund administered by the state’s insurance commissioner. The fund could be fed by a tax on HMOs, an approach the governor does not support. Med-mal reform was Ehrlich’s top priority during this year’s legislative session, but his proposal to limit court awards to malpractice victims was rejected by the Senate. Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert) and Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee Chairman Brian E. Frosh (D-Montgomery), both trial lawyers, argue that more study is needed.