ANNAPOLIS -- The roughly $40 million tax that Democrats in the Maryland legislature levied on the state's health-maintenance organizations soon will be passed along almost entirely to consumers, state regulators say.
    The 2 percent tax on HMO premiums, which the General Assembly passed over Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s veto, will cost a family of four about $200 more a year.
    Mr. Ehrlich and other Republican leaders warned last year that the tax would be paid by patients and called it a "misguided tax" from an anti-business, Democrat-controlled legislature.

"House Speaker Michael E. Bush said the tax succeeded in stopping the increases in malpractice-insurance rates that purportedly threatened to drive doctors out of business.
    "It has worked," said Mr. Busch, Anne Arundel Democrat. "Those who voted against it are grasping at any straw or vine to support their position."
    Malpractice-insurance rates have stabilized in Maryland."

Medical Mutual Liability Insurance Society of Maryland -- the state's largest insurer of doctors -- increased rates 66.8 percent since 2003, but has not filed for a rate increase for next year.
    The company collected more than $27 million this year from the subsidy funded by the HMO tax, according to the Maryland Insurance Administration, which administers the fund.