PENNSYLVANIA Rendell scolds doctors for pressing malpractice demands

Doctors want a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages awarded by juries.
HARRISBURG (AP) -- Doctors who staged a weeklong work stoppage to protest rising medical malpractice insurance rates are "obsessed" with their demand for limits on jury awards and should avoid any further job actions until state policy makers can hammer out a solution, Gov. Ed Rendell said Friday.
Speaking before several dozen newspaper editors at a luncheon sponsored by the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors, Rendell said his administration is working to complete a proposal that would provide long-term reductions in malpractice premiums.
"We hope to have our plan out in the next two weeks and we hope to have it approved by June," he said. "If I were a responsible doctor, I'd wait to see what happened."
Rendell has promised to find $220 million this year to cancel out at least half of what doctors are required to pay into the MCare fund, the state's catastrophic malpractice fund. He said that assistance -- which he said reduces overall premiums for obstetricians, surgeons and other doctors in high-risk specialties by at least 30 percent -- may be continued for a couple of years as part of his long-term proposal.
"I have to figure out why someone would be striking who's likely to get a 30-, 35-percent cut in their rates," he said. "It makes no sense. The doctors are obsessed with caps."
Legislation
Doctors are promoting legislation to discourage lawsuits or amend the state constitution to limit to $250,000 the amount of non-economic damages that juries can award. Rendell has expressed skepticism that caps would solve the problem.
The governor said he was offended when some of the thousands of doctors at a Capitol rally this week carried pictures of him and other state political leaders on oversized playing cards similar to those the U.S. military issued last month showing wanted Iraqi officials. Rendell was depicted as the ace of spades -- the same card assigned to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in the military deck.
"It's not very nice," he told the editors.
Slot machines
Rendell repeated his criticism of news coverage about his proposals to increase the state income tax and legalize slot machines at racetracks to finance reductions in local property taxes and increased school subsidies. He said the reports have focused too much on how Pennsylvanians will be affected by the tax proposals and too little on the benefits of his educational initiatives.
"If the plan is in trouble, the press has been an unwitting coconspirator in creating that trouble because you are obsessed ... with determining winners and losers," he said. "That's just a totally wrong way to look at it."
One editor asked Rendell why his plan to legalize slot machines would apply to racetracks and why an ordinary entrepreneur would not have the right to open a slots parlor.
"You do," Rendell replied. "You can go buy some land and say you're going to build a racetrack and apply for a license. That's what Chester Downs did" to recently win one of the last three racing licenses.