The news that the Peninsula Hospital in Far Rockaway is closing is all too familiar. All across New York, hospitals and health care facilities have been forced to shutter their doors, denying many New Yorkers access to basic medical care.
One of the principal drivers of these closures is the rising costs of medical liability insurance in New York, and one of the principal drivers of these higher costs is New York’s antiquated medical liability system.
New Yorkers pay more than $130 million annually in taxes to subsidize the cost of malpractice insurance, yet the premiums paid by doctors and hospitals remains astronomically high when compared to other states. Doctors in some parts of New York pay upwards of $200,000 per year in premiums and some health care providers cannot get coverage at all.
One proven solution to this problem is to cap non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. By capping non-economic judgments (that is, judgments above and beyond medical costs or lost wages), we can stem the tide of hospital closures and show doctors and health care professionals we are open for business.
Those who are injured as a result of an accident should be compensated for their medical bills and lost wages. It is the excessive and unpredictable nature of such things as the “pain and suffering” settlements that cause problems for the medical community and serve little or no purpose except to enrich trial lawyers.
Governor Andrew Cuomo included a non-economic cap in his 2011 budget, but the cap did not make it through the legislature. The governor must put the cap in his budget in 2012, but this time, we must pressure the legislature to pass it, before there are no hospitals left.
Thomas B. Stebbins, Executive Director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York.
