Health Insurance Quotes

Last Monday the subsidy for five-years, costing taxpayers $1 billion, with regard to helping Pennsylvania doctors to purchase medical malpractice insurance lapsed. As a result, doctors will now have to pay higher premiums unless Democrats and Republicans come to an agreement regarding the expansion of a state health insurance program.

The governor of Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell, is in support of a bill that has already been approved on March 17th, by the Democratic dominated House by which the future of the medical malpractice subsidy would be linked with the approval of a $1 billion health insurance program expansion designed to cover an added 220,000 adults not able to afford other coverage.

The Republicans, however, who are in control of the Senate, are not accepting of the health insurance provision. They have encouraged the House to instead approve a bill that was passed by the Senate last December. A bill that acts to extend the medical malpractice subsidy to the end of 2008.

Senate Majority Leader Dominic Pileggi, said in an interview that they hope that the House will support the bill and pass it on to Gov. Rendell, so that the state's health care providers will no what to expect.
Nevertheless last Monday the Senate adjourned not having acted on the bill that they had received from the House.

The Democrats were able to stop an attempt in the House, by Republicans, to bring the Senate bill to the floor. Their bill would not only extend the medical malpractice subsidy, but would direct the use of $50 million to assist hospitals to computerize their records and to introduce infection-control practices.

The original insurance malpractice subsidy which was backed by more than 35,000 doctors and other medical professionals originally came into effect in 2003, a year in which premiums had surged by double-digit percentages for several of the previous years.

In order to raise the funds to subsidize the bill the Legislature raised cigarette taxes by 25 cents per pack. They also took money from a separate insurance fund that received funds from surcharges on traffic tickets. The surplus derived from these fiscal sources have left a surplus, to be used to help pay for the health insurance expansion. How will this affect low cost health insurance is currently unknown.

According to Amy Kelchner, a Rendell spokeswoman, the savings for the average primary-care doctor has been $1,500 a year. High-risk specialists, such as orthopedic surgeons, neurosurgeons and obstetricians, have saved an average of $15,000 a year, she said.
Kelchner says that first ones who will feel the increased expense will be doctors whose bills came due in the past three months. She says that when the legislators come to an agreement on an extension, these payments will be refunded.