S. F. Rothenberg; Doctor, Insurer
Sanford F. Rothenberg, former president of the Los Angeles County Medical Assn., past chief of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center and vice president of Southern California Physicians Insurance Exchange, which he helped found in the 1970s at the height of the malpractice insurance crisis, is dead.
Rothenberg, a graduate of USC and UC Berkeley School of Medicine, was 71 when he died of cancer Friday at his Century City home.
Rothenberg’s idea for a physician-owned insurance company came to him around 1960, said Dr. Ernest Penka, Rothenberg’s longtime partner.
“He always believed physicians’ malpractice premiums were too high and that physicians had enough savvy to run their own company,” Penka said.
The company began in 1975, the year Rothenberg headed the county medical association.
His survivors include his wife, actress Fay Wray; two sons; two daughters, a sister and six grandchildren. The family asks that contributions in Rothenberg’s name be made to the American Cancer Society.
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