TRENTON, N.J., November 14 – The states estimated 50,000 lawyers will have to live with the temporary $75 tax they have to pay as their share of the state subsidy program to help doctors pay their medical malpractice liability insurance premiums (see November 6 Insurance Advocate: Second Round of Payments Going to Some Doctors).

The New Jersey State Bar Association lost on its appeal to escape the tax when the New Jersey State Supreme Court refused to hear the case.

The lawyers challenged the tax because they said it used public funds to subsidize private health care professionals, and was imposed without proof that there is a real health care crisis in the state.

Further, the association said only a few hundred of its members handled medical malpractice cases, yet the tax was being imposed on the entire profession.

When the special fund to raise about $26 million a year for three years was enacted, it applied the tax to all those connected within the health care field, including, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, hospitals, and even the six million employees in the unemployment insurance program.

The tax and the premium subsidy to about 1,200 doctors in three high-risk specialties is supposed to expire next year.

The bar association issued a statement that read, in part, We believe the complex constitutional questions involving the separation of powers and equal protection clauses that this case presented were ripe for consideration. We firmly believe the factual and legislative record is devoid of any compelling evidence of a real health care crisis, and certainly of any rational basis for imposing this tax burden on the legal profession.