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Excerpt
In Pennsylvania, physicians recently went on strike. They’d rather call it by another name, but that’s what it is. Doctors closed up their offices, some for the day and some for the week; they told their patients they’d be available only for emergencies and any such cases would be seen in the nearest emergency department. And then they marched in the big cities and the small towns. They marched from the local hospitals down several blocks to the local court houses, where they held up picket signs reading, “Less doctors=less care.” They did this in protest of the rising costs of liability insurance, which they say has driven some of them into retirement or to other states to practice, jeopardizing patient access to quality health care.
Physician liability insurance has become astronomically overpriced. According to the American Hospital Association’s professional liability survey, professional liability insurance costs have doubled in almost half of the hospitals in crisis states. Consequently, being a physician isn’t as lucrative a career as it once was. The AHA survey reports that 53% of the hospitals in crisis states find it more difficult to recruit physicians, and 45% report a loss of physicians and/or reduced coverage in emergency departments. 1 Nevertheless, physicians have gained support from the public and their state legislators and now clamor for the government to step in to solve this one facet of the health care crisis.
