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Sunday, January 6, 2008

A Letter All NYS Female Residents Should Read!

Dear Trusted Patients:

We urgently need your help. As you may or may not know, there is and insurance crisis for doctors in New York, and on Long Island in particular. The cost of doctors liability (or malpractice) insurance has steadily risen over the last few years. This last July, doctors were assessed a 14% increase in their premiums. This translates into an enormous increase in expenses for our practice and threatens our ability to care for you. We should expect another 30% increase in these premiums in the coming year.Medicare payments to doctors are expected to decline another 10% beginning in January, 2008. The commercial health plans, (Blue Cross Blue Shield, Oxford, United Health Care and others) continue to reduce and delay payments to us for surgeries and/or chemotherapy we already given you. This combination of increase costs and reduced reimbursement is a set up for failure.We are not alone. Physicians and hospitals across Long Island are facing financial catastrophe should these increases be put through.New York is facing a health care crisis. We need your help to reach out to your elected official on our behalf. Ask them who will be available to care for women on Long Island with gynecologic cancers if nothing is done to stop this crisis.We are specifically asking that you reach out to your elected New York officials and ask for tort reform or liability insurance reform. At the same time, you can urge them to sign on to legislation that is pending at the federal level to reduce further payments to physicians and for cancer care. See list below. We cannot do this alone. We urgently need your help if we are going to be able to continue to care for you.

Sincerely,

Eva Chalas, MD, Michael Pearl, MD, Ann Buhl, MD, Kent Chan, MD,and Jeannine Villella, DO.


THIS IS THE PRACTICE THAT SAVED MY LIFE...
Please call the toll-free tort reform hotline at 1-866-728-3397. This will generate a letter to Governor Eliot Spitzer, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver urging them that we need liability reform NOW.
www.acogny.org

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