The Maryland General Assembly gave final approval yesterday to legislation designed to curb doctors' soaring medical malpractice insurance rates, mustering just enough votes to turn back an intense lobbying effort and override Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s veto.
The Democrat-backed measure provides immediate relief to Maryland doctors, who were facing double-digit increases in this year's premiums, and includes long-term initiatives aimed at limiting the cost of malpractice litigation.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. watches the vote tally.
(Lucian Perkins - The Washington Post)
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Md. Politics: A showdown over medical malpractice legislation has set the stage in the General Assembly. Slot machines, teen driving and same-sex marriage are also among the hot topics driving the session.
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Md. Legislature: 2005 Session: Senate Minority Leader J. Lowell Stoltzfus (R) was online to discuss the upcoming legislative session and how lawmakers view the issues.
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"The beneficiaries today are the citizens of Maryland," said House Speaker Michael E. Busch (D-Anne Arundel). "It's not about the legislature and the governor. . . . It was about access to quality health care."
Lawmakers convening for the final day of a rare emergency session took a series of votes on vetoes Ehrlich has issued over the past year. Democratic leaders let stand his rejection of a bill capping state university tuition and failed to override his veto of a bill requiring higher wages on state contracts. Even so, it was a bleak day for the Republican governor, who watched six measures become law over his objections.
Ehrlich scrapped a plan to unveil his legislative agenda for the 2005 session, which starts today, choosing instead to lash out at Democrats for passing a malpractice bill he rejected as "a superfund for trial lawyers" and "another tax on working families."
"It's incomplete and inadequate, and, of course, it sends the signal down here that this [issue] is finished," Ehrlich said.
One Republican, Sen. Richard F. Colburn (Dorchester) said the show of legislative muscle was clearly intended to embarrass Ehrlich. Democrats disagreed.
Passage of the malpractice bill by the thinnest of margins capped a remarkable journey for an initiative the governor called his number one priority. After lawmakers passed an altered version during a special session he initiated, he vetoed the bill Monday.
In rejecting the bill, Ehrlich said it was unacceptable because the legal changes fell far short of what he sought and because Democrats chose to use a tax on HMOs to pay for doctors' relief from rising insurance premiums.
But lawmakers said the bill would rescue physicians, some of whom have considered abandoning their practices, by creating a state fund to hold insurance rate increases to about 5 percent this year, compared with an average 33 percent increase that was facing those covered by the state's largest carrier.
"The doctors should be dancing in the streets of Annapolis," said Del. Joseph F. Vallario Jr. (D-Prince George's), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who helped push the measure through the House.
Yesterday's overrides marked the second year in a row that Democrats succeeded in resurrecting bills over Ehrlich's objections. Before that, it had been 15 years since lawmakers had last overridden a governor's veto.
This year, in addition to the medical malpractice measure, the General Assembly resurrected measures that would clarify the state's open-meetings laws and tweak the state's approach to nursing care.
Lawmakers failed to override Ehrlich's veto of a living-wage bill that would have required state contractors to pay workers $10.50 an hour. Tom Hucker, executive director of Progressive Maryland, which lobbied for passage, said anemic Senate support was "like a body blow for the Democratic Party."
