Submitted by Alfred J. Lemire, Dec 27, 2007 11:39

Mr. Dinalio looks in the wrong direction. He ought to support either of two other possible choices: 1. Force every lawyer in New York State to cough up $25,000. That is a rough estimate and assumes the state has twice as many lawyers as physicians. 2. Not every lawyer benefits from the present system. How can one properly charge a lawyer who might tach contract law in a law school? Or a lawyer who administers estates? Why not go after the lawyers who rakes in money under the present tort system, which, one assumes, includes pain and suffering levies? The charge might mean an assessment of $2 million to each tort lawyer. Maybe $3 million. Maybe $50 million. That might chase every tort lawyer out of the State of New York. That would be nice. 3. Presumably real malpractice exists and so do genuine torts and reasonable payments. The insurance problem presumably results from huge malpractice awards, some of which may even get to the victims after tort lawyers get first shot at physicians' and insurers' money. Presumably, no caps or other restraints limit the size of malpractice awards. So why not go after the people ultimately responsible for the huge awards? And they are . . . roll the drums, please: Lawyers in the legislature and in the executive branch. Why not every legislator? Since nonlawyers also vote and thus create the laws; they must share some responsibility for the high insurance rates and fund shortfall. 4. Why not assess the lawyers in government according to their financial circumstances? "From each according to his ability [to pay]"? Some lawyers might serve in office who have just gotten out of law school. Or they spent a few years in country law practices and never built up much wealth. Or they worked a few years as public defenders before becoming state representatives. In a good from each according to his means solution, for example, Gov. Spitzer would be assessed a share of the needed money according to his wealth. The article does not tell a reader how many physicians are in the state and thus how much money Mr. Dinallo seeks to get. Let's assume--this is no more than a rough estimate and probably errs badly--there are 25,000 practicing physicians in the state. (One would not include retired, disabled, and otherwise nonpracticing physicians.) Let's see: $50,000 x 25,000 = $1,250,000,000. Gov. Spitzer's share, in that from each according to his resources solution, would likely be somewhere around $1 billion, perhaps less, perhaps more. Wouldn't that be nice. It's too late to wish a Happy Hanukah or Merry Christmas to the lawyers who really are the ones responsible for the insurance mess. And it's difficult to figure out how the lawyers who are to blame would be forced to cough up the money, unless brother lawyers, also called justices or judges, found some wording in the state's constitution that gives them the power to levy appropriate payments on the state's lawyers who write and enforce, in various ways, the laws that suck money from physicians. 5. To a limited extent, perhaps, New York has something called a representative democracy. The voters elect the people ultimately responsible for the mess. One could get the money from every voter or, using Mr. Dinullo's approach of seeking out every warm body, the (estimated) 19,500,000 residents of the state. Assuming Mr. Dinullo seeks $1,250,000, that would work out to $64.11 to everyone, including every tot and toddler and oncology patient. Perhaps, after forking over $250 each--one will have to pay for the cost of administration and for the lawyers who will set the rules for payment and the fining of adults who duck their charges, and other administrative e costs--the voters will be encouraged to clean the Augean Stable in Albany and vote da bums out. And the wolves will lie down with the lambs. And the sun will rise in the west. Happy New Year!

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