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Three Months In, PA Budget Details Unclear
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| Pennsylvania Sens. Jake Corman, R-Centre, left, and Dominic Pileggi, R-Delaware, center, and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Joe Scarnati, R-Jefferson, right, address the media during a news conference about the Pennsylvania state budget at the Capitol in Harrisburg on Thursday. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press) |
By BRADLEY VASOLI, The Bulletin
Two weeks after Gov. Ed Rendell, D, and leaders of both parties in the state legislature arrived at a budget deal that most believed could pass, and three months past the official annual budget deadline, negotiations continue.
The roughly $28 billion spending plan increases education spending by $300 million over last year and sustains spending on other state programs important to the governor and his allies in the General Assembly. It also broadens the state sales tax to cover arts and culture events. Also, to the chagrin of anti-tax economic experts, it also slows down the phase-out of the state’s punitive capital stock and franchise tax.
Nonetheless, some who benefit from Harrisburg’s largesse and who suffer from its decisions to tax are clamoring for a redo of the budget.
Despite the significant concessions Republicans have made to the Democrats in terms of higher corporate and tobacco taxes, many of the lingering concerns are attributable to Democrats who oppose the new taxes on attending arts events and on small games of chance.
Health Care And Budget Issues Converge
Pennsylvania’s doctors are also watching closely as state officials discuss a hefty expenditure the state makes each year in an effort to keep their costs manageable.
The compromise at which Mr. Rendell and the divided legislature arrived to balance the budget involves transferring $800 million from the Mcare (Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error) fund to pay for a variety of commonwealth programs. The fund covers much of the costs incurred by Pennsylvania’s doctors as a result of malpractice lawsuits. Some physicians’ organizations are fuming about the decision to raid it.
Dr. Daniel J. Glunk, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, called shifting funds out of Mcare and into other programs a “profound violation” of the trust between the state and the physicians whose legal costs the state is covering.
“I can’t imagine how we are going to be able to recruit young physicians to come to Pennsylvania when they find out their liability premiums may be taken to balance the state budget,” he said. “I urge you to carefully weigh the impact balancing the budget on the backs of our state’s health-care providers will have on our patients.”
But while some doctors support Mcare, other medical professionals and experts say the program merely passes on the costs of frivolous lawsuits from doctors to the entire taxpaying public and that such costs cannot disappear without serious tort reforms.
Nathan Benefield, director of policy research at the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation, said many legislators intended the Mcare program to be a temporary stopgap measure to cover liability costs while the state pursued meaningful tort reform. But it has, he added, become something much less innocuous.
“I think in many ways it’s a perverse incentive,” he said, describing it as a “huge pot of money” that allows attorneys to enrich themselves by suing physicians.
Mr. Benefield said that Pennsylvania should pursue tort reforms that cap certain damage awards, limit lawyers’ fees and possibly enact a “loser-pays” system that would make plaintiffs accountable for lawsuits to which courts don’t give credence. He also said the state should reform “joint and several liability” which burdens parties not directly responsible for alleged medical malpractice with paying some of the awards to plaintiffs.
Since the advent of the health-care reform debate this year, lawyers and their allies in politics have argued that medical liability does not significantly worsen America’s spiraling health care costs. In defense of this premise, they cite an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, which in 2004 said malpractice lawsuits raise the costs of health care in America by roughly two percent.
Mr. Benefield said that percentage has the effect of understating the real costs of malpractice lawsuits because, all told, it translates into many billions of dollars.
Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us
The roughly $28 billion spending plan increases education spending by $300 million over last year and sustains spending on other state programs important to the governor and his allies in the General Assembly. It also broadens the state sales tax to cover arts and culture events. Also, to the chagrin of anti-tax economic experts, it also slows down the phase-out of the state’s punitive capital stock and franchise tax.
Nonetheless, some who benefit from Harrisburg’s largesse and who suffer from its decisions to tax are clamoring for a redo of the budget.
Despite the significant concessions Republicans have made to the Democrats in terms of higher corporate and tobacco taxes, many of the lingering concerns are attributable to Democrats who oppose the new taxes on attending arts events and on small games of chance.
Health Care And Budget Issues Converge
Pennsylvania’s doctors are also watching closely as state officials discuss a hefty expenditure the state makes each year in an effort to keep their costs manageable.
The compromise at which Mr. Rendell and the divided legislature arrived to balance the budget involves transferring $800 million from the Mcare (Medical Care Availability and Reduction of Error) fund to pay for a variety of commonwealth programs. The fund covers much of the costs incurred by Pennsylvania’s doctors as a result of malpractice lawsuits. Some physicians’ organizations are fuming about the decision to raid it.
Dr. Daniel J. Glunk, president of the Pennsylvania Medical Society, called shifting funds out of Mcare and into other programs a “profound violation” of the trust between the state and the physicians whose legal costs the state is covering.
“I can’t imagine how we are going to be able to recruit young physicians to come to Pennsylvania when they find out their liability premiums may be taken to balance the state budget,” he said. “I urge you to carefully weigh the impact balancing the budget on the backs of our state’s health-care providers will have on our patients.”
But while some doctors support Mcare, other medical professionals and experts say the program merely passes on the costs of frivolous lawsuits from doctors to the entire taxpaying public and that such costs cannot disappear without serious tort reforms.
Nathan Benefield, director of policy research at the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation, said many legislators intended the Mcare program to be a temporary stopgap measure to cover liability costs while the state pursued meaningful tort reform. But it has, he added, become something much less innocuous.
“I think in many ways it’s a perverse incentive,” he said, describing it as a “huge pot of money” that allows attorneys to enrich themselves by suing physicians.
Mr. Benefield said that Pennsylvania should pursue tort reforms that cap certain damage awards, limit lawyers’ fees and possibly enact a “loser-pays” system that would make plaintiffs accountable for lawsuits to which courts don’t give credence. He also said the state should reform “joint and several liability” which burdens parties not directly responsible for alleged medical malpractice with paying some of the awards to plaintiffs.
Since the advent of the health-care reform debate this year, lawyers and their allies in politics have argued that medical liability does not significantly worsen America’s spiraling health care costs. In defense of this premise, they cite an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, which in 2004 said malpractice lawsuits raise the costs of health care in America by roughly two percent.
Mr. Benefield said that percentage has the effect of understating the real costs of malpractice lawsuits because, all told, it translates into many billions of dollars.
Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us
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