Court Opinion

ID: 9700846
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-25 21:51:07.728029+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:21:15.183429
License: Public Domain

Dissenting Opinion by
Judge Crumlish, Jr.:
I must respectfully dissent because the constitutional issue raised by this case demands an expression of my views which the majority opinion does not resolve. It is apparent that at this appellate level, a sharp difference exists in the interpretation of the Health Care Services Malpractice Act (Act).
*554The enactment of the Health Care Services Malpractice Act to remedy the alleged “Medical Malpractice Crisis” is a classic example of a qualified success. The legislature may boast of performing a successful operation on the medical profession and its clientele because it can now assure reasonable insurance rates and a more efficient adjudicatory process. That success, unfortunately, however, is afforded at the expense of the livelihood of several practitioners. The cure afforded by the Act is so overwhelming that it has injured many of those it intended to help. Its regulations are unduly prohibitive to both small practitioners, such as Appellant, and new practitioners who neither have the financial wherewithal! to meet its requirements nor the clientele able to sustain higher medical costs and, in my judgment, the requirements of the Act result in an unconstitutional infringement of Appellant’s right to work. See Secretary of Revenue v. John’s Vending Corp., 453 Pa. 488, 309 A.2d 358 (1973). The right to work is no longer a mere privilege; it is now a property right in its fullest measure. Once it is certified that a person is qualified to practice a profession, his right to do so should remain unfettered and unhampered until it is established that because of either misconduct or moral, physical or professional ineptitude, he is not fit to perform his duties. Financial security has never been a condition precedent to the practice of medicine, or any other profession, and to impose such a condition constitutes an unreasonable restriction of a property right resulting in án unconstitutional deprivation of property. Because the Act requires each and every practitioner to both purchase insurance and pay a surcharge into a Catastrophe Loss Fund as a condition to continued practice, it is, in my judgment, unconstitutional.
*555Moreover, the Act’s establishment of the Catastrophe Loss Fund to be drawn on by practitioners whose limits of insured liability is exceeded by an insurance award indisputably encourages claimants to seek awards greater in sum than would otherwise be available and, in effect, constitutes an absolute indemnity against any injury sustained in any and all amounts and circumstances. The Fund virtually eliminates the risk to be taken by insurance companies and places it on individual practitioners, and entices enterprising individuals energized by ingenious jury presentations to seek windfall gains. Consequent increased insurance premiums beyond the reach of the insured are inevitable. Equally inevitable are higher medical costs to those who can least afford them. For these reasons, I conclude, as did Judge Mencer, that the Health Care Services Malpractice Act is unconstitutional.