December 22, 2004

Last week, we linked to Michael Krauss's paper on the state of medical malpractice liability law in Maryland. On Monday, Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich signed an executive order calling the Maryland legislature into special session on December 28 to address the issue. Also on Monday, the Maryland Public Policy Institute, which published Michael's paper, held a public forum to discuss the medical malpractice reform proposals currently being discussed in the state; participants included Krauss, University of Illinois law professor David Hyman, and Anirban Basu, chairman and chief executive officer at Sage Policy Group LLC in Baltimore. The panelists generally felt that the proposed solution -- a "stop-loss" fund to help doctors meet spiraling insurance premia -- would not be an effective long-term fix. Krauss asserted that the policy's result would actually be "negative," in that it "subsidize[d] tort liability."