Broken system?

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Several hundred doctors, medical students and hospital workers rallied at the Capitol yesterday to press Congress for immediate medical malpractice liability reform.

The first national rally from the Coalition for Accessible Physicians, an East Rutherford, N.J., physician group, brought doctors from New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, Massachusetts, West Virginia, Delaware and Connecticut who said they are feeling a financial squeeze from rising liability insurance rates.

Doctors have held rallies in individual states, but there have been few national efforts to address the double-digit growth in medical malpractice insurance rates, said Dr. Ruth Schulze, the coalition's chairwoman.

In the District, where doctors are increasingly heading to Maryland and Virginia to avoid high insurance rates, general surgeons have seen their annual premiums jump from an average rate of $60,506 to $69,270 this year, said the NCRIC Group Inc., a Washington health care consulting company. The average rate was $35,467 in 2000.

Dr. Schulze, a Ridgewood, N.J., obstetrician and gynecologist, and hundreds of other doctors clad in white coats yesterday marched from Union Station to the West Lawn of the Capitol to rally primarily for a law that would cap jury awards in punitive and noneconomic damages.

The group blames trial lawyers and health care insurers for rising insurance rates.

Dr. Schulze, said the main goal is for Congress to pass a federal law modeled after California's 1975 law, which has a $250,000 cap on awards for noneconomic damages, also known as pain and suffering.

"The first thing we need to fix is the abuse in the legal system," she said.

The coalition also wants health courts, in which judges would focus only on malpractice cases.

Trial lawyers said those measures would shield negligent doctors and force patients to choose between "bad care and no care."