President's Message


I hope every member and his or her family is having a wonderful summer.

I want to report to our members that in the last AMA annual meeting in Chicago, there were many discussions about a variety of options for getting some relief for the increasingly unaffordable medical liability insurance premiums.

Some members tried to be creative and suggests liability surcharges. This means that physicians would tack a charge onto the patients’ bills to help offset their insurance premiums, but Medicare and Medicaid will not pay this. As you know, tort reform is going nowhere. One member stated that if we get the patients attention by asking them to pay the surcharge, most of them will refuse, but might get more involved in the tort reform.

It is very important to include the patients, in the fight to pass reforms, such as a $250,000 cap on non-economical damages, in medical malpractice cases. Other physicians thought this could give the wrong idea, that we are using the malpractice crises to increase our fees.

These are food for thought. I think we should think about them but I will not encourage doing it until we get legal opinion from the AMA. The AMA said they would check and report back to members at the next meeting in December.

In the meantime, God helps us, particularly the specialists with the highest premiums.