nodecomment-wrapper.tpl.php no longer used?

Is the nodecomment-wrapper.tpl.php file no longer used?

I'm hacking the file a little bit to work with Premium Module (I inserted the following into the top of nodecomment_render):

  if ($node->premium_access == '')
  {
	$output="Comments only available to members";	
        return $output;
  }

this simply hides comments for users that don't have access to premium content. I would prefer to add this to the wrapper template, but after quite a bit of experimentation I couldn't get it to work.