The measure establishes a fund to help pay malpractice insurance premiums for doctors in high-risk specialties like obstetrics and neurosurgery.

Besides doctors in high-risk specialties, hospitals are also affected by rising insurance costs.

Insurers that recognize this reduced risk do not group urgent care centers with hospital emergency physicians and other high-risk specialties.

But medicial societies said such high-risk specialties as neurosurgery, obstetrics and orthopedic surgery are three that have been hit hard by soaring malpractice premiums.

The cost of premiums and outrageously high jury awards have forced physicians in high-risk specialties to quit their practices.

Doctors in high-risk specialties like obstetrics and neurosurgery faced larger increases, they said, driving many of them out of practice.

While the department has granted increases in some high-risk specialties, it has not allowed a general increase in malpractice coverage in several years.

Our system already effectively penalizes doctors who practice in high-risk specialties, like obstetrics, and those who care for the sickest patients.

Medical students who might have once chosen obstetrics and other high-risk specialties now view research as more viable.

Doctors in the high-risk specialties are going to become hard to find.