TRENTON, N.J., October 19 – The state, for the second year in a row, is giving a select group of doctors money to help them pay their medical malpractice insurance premiums, as part of a program that Insurance Commissioner Steven Goldman called an ongoing effort to protect access to medical care for New Jersey residents.

Goldman announced that $15.7 million will go to 1,272 doctors who applied and qualified for the money. He said the state will send checks of $17,821 each to 74 neurosurgeons; $16,006 each to 735 obstetricians and gynecologists, and $5,753 each to 463 diagnostic radiologists.

Those three groups qualified because they were medical practitioners in certain high risk specialties with high premiums, according to Goldman. In August, Insurance Advocate reported that the Insurance Department decided not to extend the program to other types of physicians this year because of the limited funds, and concerns that the qualified specialists would not receive enough subsidies to continue practice in the state.

Goldman said that physicians who were not eligible for the subsidy in the past will be included in the review next year.

Is the Program Effective?

One of the criticisms of the program is that the program helps only a small percentage of the total 18,000 physicians in the state who also are hit with soaring malpractice insurance rates.

Although neurosurgeons, as a group, received the highest single amounts of the subsidy, their average liability premiums are among the highest " $130,000 a year, a figure the department stressed was an average expenditure in the designated specialty, and is not based on total actual premiums. The average yearly premium was $116,183 for obstetricians and gynecologists, and the average yearly premium was $1,756 for radiologists.

Goldman said of the malpractice insurance costs, We are seeing more stability in the market as we enter the second year of a three-year program for the subsidies.

Charles Moss, president of the New Jersey Medical Society, said, however, that more than 17,000 active physicians continue to suffer from high rates with no relief in sight.

He said the society supports the states effort to provide some relief to the hardest hit physicians who struggle to pay exorbitant medial liability insurance premiums, and he added that many physicians who have not had a single claim against them have seen their rates double and triple over the past few years.

Moss said the society believes that long-term reforms are needed not only to stop rate increases, but to lower rates as well.

The society had fought unsuccessfully three years ago to cap jury awards in medical malpractice cases, contending that was the best way to lower premiums. The Legislature defeated efforts to cap the awards, and instead came up with the three-year subsidy plan, scheduled to expire next year.

Along with the feud about the high rates came a report from the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs, which indicated that $162.5 million was paid in all new Jersey medical malpractice cases in 2004.

The money for the subsidy program comes from a special tax of $75 on 108,000 persons who are lawyers, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and optometrists. In addition, there is a $3 surcharge on employers in the state for each worker paying into the unemployment compensation fund. That surcharge covers six million workers.

In all, about $22 million is collected, with $16 million of it set aside for the subsidies, and $1 million for student loans to obstetricians and gynecologists who promise to stay in the state. To sweeten the pot, the Legislature also designated about $7 million each year for charity costs in hospitals, and $1 million for new mothers who longer are covered by Medicaid.