Talk of a $50,000 -per-doctor surcharge has physicians in the state "petrified", according to Robert Goldberg, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York. "A Brooklyn brain surgeon now pays $267,000 a year in malpractice insurance premiums and an obstetrician in Queens pays $180,490," but now it turns out, per state insurance superintendent Eric Dinallo, that insurance rates have been "been artificially low for more than a decade".