Feb. 16--SANTA FE -- A sponsor of one legislative effort to help protect doctors against potentially high malpractice awards fears that the measure has hit a wall in House committees.
Senate Minority Leader Stuart Ingle, R-Portales, said Monday that his bill (SB 213), which would effectively reverse last year's decision from state Superintendent of Insurance Morris Chavez to remove doctors' practices from the list of those eligible for a state medical malpractice cap, has been lingering in the House Business and Industry Committee without being heard. The bill has already been approved by the full Senate.
A similar bill that originated in the House has yet to be heard at all in the House Judiciary Committee.
Doctors have been urging the courts to overturn Chavez's decision, saying it would allow for unlimited malpractice awards. Chavez has said the law doesn't provide for the businesses associated with doctors to be covered by the cap, but he has asked lawmakers to change state law to fix the problem.
Ingle said that it wouldn't affect large operations like Presbyterian, but that family practices could start leaving the state because of rising insurance costs.
"The little ones can't exist," Ingle said.
Individual physicians are still covered by the state's Medical Malpractice Act, but the limited liability companies and other corporations organized around the physicians' practices are not after Chavez's decision. The state had allowed those entities to be covered for two decades before Chavez overturned the policy.
The act limits to $600,000 the noneconomic damages that can be paid to a victim of medical malpractice. There is no limit on payment required to care for an injured patient.
The New Mexico Trial Lawyers Association has lobbied against the bills.
Association President Pia Salazar could not be reached Monday.
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