TRENTON, N.J., May 20 – Legislation has been introduced to continue for another three years the $17 million yearly subsidy program to help the states high-risk doctors pay their medical liability insurance premiums.

The program has served as a legislative answer to high premiums, and as a way to keep high-risk specialists from leaving the state.

The proposal for an extension was quietly introduced by State Senator Joseph Vitale (D-Middlesex), who originally sponsored the first subsidy program three years ago to establish a special tax to fund the program. The Senate Commerce Committee and the Assembly Insurance Committee will consider the measure in time for a full legislative vote and enactment by July 1, when the existing program is scheduled to expire.

The extension being proposed apparently does not change the way the money will be raised: a special $75 head tax on all lawyers, doctors, podiatrist, dentists, and chiropractors, and $3 for each employee covered under the unemployment compensation law.

That head tax raises about $26 million a year, but only $17 million goes for insurance premium subsidies to a select few, like surgeons, obstetricians/gynecologists, and, until this year, diagnostic radiologists. The remaining $9 million goes as special aid for health care, including $1 million for a student loan reimbursement program to obstetricians and gynecologists who agree to practice in medically under-served areas of the state for at least four years, and $1.2 million for qualifying new mothers in the N.J. Family Care program.

In the first two years of the current program, about 2,500 doctors shared in the money, with neurosurgeons and obstetrician/gynecologists getting the most because of their high insurance premiums.

The payments this year saw 74 neurosurgeons qualify for subsidies of $17,281 each. Their premiums are reportedly $135,000 a year. Subsidies also went to 735 obstetrician/gynecologists who each received $16,006. Their premiums were reported at $188,000 a year.

Under the current system the recipients and amounts are decided by the insurance commissioner based on latest premium statistics.

When enacted three years ago, the program was intended to be a one-shot, three-year program. The Medical Society of New Jersey, representing most of the 18,000 physicians in the state, had battled for a law to limit court awards for medical malpractice, but the Legislature defeated that initiative and instead passed the subsidy program.