In many respects our health care system has never been better. In general, we enjoy longer, healthier lives and benefits of miraculous medical technology.

In spite of these advances, our health care system faces a growing 'silent' crisis that most people are generally unaware of - a runaway medical liability system that threatens to drive many physicians out of practice.

As an obstetrician, I see first hand the impact on my profession of sky-high jury awards for real or perceived medical errors. These awards can now run into tens of millions of dollars, far more than the $1 million of insurance coverage that each obstetrician purchases at an unaffordable cost of over $115,000 a year in premiums. What good is insurance if personal injury lawyers manipulate impressionable juries into making outrageous awards of millions of dollars above a doctor's insurance coverage levels? That means that each time we deliver a baby, we place all of our personal assets at risk along with our family's financial security. No profession can operate in such an unstable environment.

We already are seeing physicians dropping their obstetrical practices and limiting themselves exclusively to gynecologic services, refusing higher risk patients and procedures, and otherwise restricting their practices. If this continues unchecked, over time women's access to obstetrical services will be compromised. I urge my patients, friends and neighbors to call our local State Assembly member Robert Sweeney at 631-957-2087 and urge him to fix this broken legal system before it is too late.

Timothy Brown, MD