The proposal is similar to an existing state program that collects surcharges on insurance premiums to pay for a statewide insurance fraud task force.
A tip in March 2007 from an insurance company started the investigation, Operation Direct Hit, which ultimately involved the district attorney's office, the F.B.I., the Police Department's organized crime division, a state insurance-fraud task force and insurance firms.
Hospital officials used the letter as an occasion to lobby for two malpractice insurance changes proposed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's task force on Medicaid overhaul: a cap on noneconomic damages, like pain and suffering, for malpractice suits, and an indemnity fund for neurologically damaged infants.
Ms. Smith noted that soon after being visited by the task force, one employer began paying unemployment insurance taxes for 205 employees it previously had not reported.
The chairman of the council's task force is Maurice R. Greenberg, chief executive of insurance giant AIG and a big fund-raiser for President Bush.
Ed Fend, a retired Navy captain who serves on the task force, said he was surprised at the insurance industry's failure to respond to the state's initial invitation.
But the mere mention of them by the task force was enough to send executives at the insurance companies that sell the products into paroxysms of glee.
New guidelines from the task force, whose recommendations tend to be followed by most insurance companies, are due on July 16.
Mr. Bush said he would form a White House task force to devise a proposal that relies on private insurance plans, a government plan and H.M.O.'s to cover all the elderly.
His account of the 1994 health care train wreck, for example, rightly deplores the power and demagogy of the insurance lobbies, but underplays the failures of Ira Magaziner's arrogant, closed-door White House task force.
The university created a task force that recommended providing more training for its student journalists, buying libel insurance and creating a student-run alternative paper or Web site.
