MOULTRIE — A bill that would cap jury awards to $250,000 and limit medical malpractice lawsuits was introduced into the Georgia Senate Tuesday as a solution to stop skyrocketing insurance rates.

The bill would also put a $250,000 cap on seeking punitive damages from a faulty product and also tightens restrictions on who can serve as an expert witness.

The topic is a sore subject for two powerful groups — doctors and lawyers. A Moultrie physician and a Moultrie attorney have weighed in on the issue.

Dr. J. Michael Sharon, an OB/GYN who practices in Moultrie and Sylvester, pays $35,000 in malpractice insurance this year. He expects to pay double that next year.

“It’s really been the last couple of years that everything’s gone crazy,” he said. “There’s no question that it’s driving (doctors) out of business.

Doctors, such as neurosurgeons and obstetricians, who perform high-risk surgeries say they pay too much in malpractice insurance rates because of lottery-type winnings sometimes awarded by juries in malpractice suits and need intervention.

Last month, some surgeons in West Virginia and Mississippi walked off the job in protest, and New Jersey doctors walked off the job for a week this month.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Price of Roswell, a physician and the bill’s sponsor, blamed huge jury awards on the increasing medical malpractice insurance rates, which in turn cause doctors and hospitals to go out of business.

“Skyrocketing medical malpractice premiums are debilitating Georgia’s health care delivery system — the threat of community hospitals closing and physicians limiting their practice is a sobering reality,” Price said.

Sharon added, “I think it’s unfortunate because there are times when people are hurt” by malpractice,” he said. “But so many cases are frivolous. People are going to have bad outcomes. You can do everything right, but when something goes wrong, people want somebody to blame.”

According to a recent survey released by the Georgia Board for Physician Workforce, nearly one in five Georgia doctors are abandoning high-risk medical procedures, including delivering babies, and hundreds more are leaving the state or retiring because of high medical malpractice insurance rates.

Dr. Sharon said he has not yet cut any of his procedures because of high-costs for insurance.

The American Medical Association listed Georgia was one of 12 “crisis” states where rising insurance costs could lead doctors to leave or limit their practices.

But lawyers blame insurance companies for the soaring rates, not juries.

“This plan is just smoke and mirrors,” said Rep. Tom Bordeaux (D-Savannah) and chair of the House Judiciary Committee. “Jury verdicts have gone up but so has the cost of medical care in general.

“Their plan will not help the problem and I’d like to see the final version of the bill because it’s unlikely to pass as it is now. There is no cure-all for this problem.”

Jon Forehand, a Moultrie lawyer and member of the National Trial Lawyers Association, said he sees no reason to change the current system.

“Who better to decide the outcome of a situation than 12 disinterested people?” he asked. “Putting a cap on suits will only make things worse for victims.”

The Georgia Trial Lawyers Association’s Web site claims that the Medical Association of Georgia and MAG Mutual insurance are “seeking to create” the “tort crisis.” A University of Georgia study “concluded that there is no tort crisis in Georgia,” the Web site said.

Gould B. Hagler Jr., a lobbyist for the Independent Insurance Agents of Georgia, said those arguments are bogus and absurd.

“The arguments being made by the Georgia Trial Lawyers Association are so wrong in so many different ways, I just don’t know where to begin,” Hagler said. “Our view is that it’s not an insurance problem, it’s a problem with the civil justice system.”

The 2002 insurance rates reported by the doctors surveyed ranged from just under $8,000 a year for psychiatry to more than $60,000 for neurosurgery. Obstetricians reported paying nearly $50,000.





And the doctors reported prices increasing anywhere from 11 percent to 30 percent in the last year.