Close to Home: Proposition 46 will save lives

It has happened to tens of thousands of Californians, and not a single one of them expected it.

No one thinks they, or a loved one, will be killed, maimed or disfigured by medical negligence. No one thinks their life will be turned upside down by the actions of a doctor-shopping prescription drug addict high on too many pills scored from too many doctors. No one thinks they could be harmed by a doctor impaired by drugs or alcohol.

Yet these things happen. And they could happen to you, they could happen to the ones we love. Experts say up to 440,000 patients die each year of preventable medical errors, the nation’s third leading cause of death behind only cancer and heart disease. But too little is being done to stem that silent death toll. Too many victims are kids. Too many are moms and grandparents. They’re people like you and me.

That’s why I support Proposition 46 on the November ballot, to make all of us in California safer. It offers three common-sense changes to improve patient safety.

Doctor drug testing: Many public safety professions – including airline pilots, truck drivers, and train engineers – are subject to random testing for substance abuse. Why not doctors, who literally hold our lives in their hands? Dr. Stephen Loyd thinks doctors should be tested, and he should know. He’s a recovering prescription drug addict who was treating patients while taking as many as 100 pain pills a day. Others who have called for doctor drug testing include the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and patient safety experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine.

Control prescription drug abuse: Abuse of prescription narcotics is the nation’s fastest growing drug epidemic. Proposition 46 would turn back this tide by requiring that doctors check the state’s existing prescription narcotics database to ensure a patient isn’t being over-medicated or, worse yet, “doctor shopping” to feed their abuse. The database has been in existence nearly two decades. .

Medical negligence accountability: In 1975 California enacted a $250,000 cap on “pain and suffering” compensation for victims of medical negligence. While the price of everything else has soared, the cap has never been adjusted despite four decades of inflation. Proposition 46 would update the cap only to give it the same economic value it had in 1975, offering something closer to fair compensation for medical harm and boosting the financial deterrent to causing harm in the first place – and we know the medical and insurance industries respond to financial incentives.

The cap is particularly unfair to the most vulnerable of victims – kids, nonworking parents, retirees, the disabled, anyone without future wages, a key metric for assessing economic damages in malpractice cases.

It also discriminates against women. The calculus is simple and sexist: Women earn on average 77 percent of what men do, so their economic damages are less for the same injuries caused by malpractice.

What does pain and suffering really mean? Ask Claire McCormack, whose daughter died after her doctors failed to realize her IV nutrition had been disconnected for two days. Ask Tammy Smick, whose son died when a hospital overdosed him with drugs. Ask Alejandra Gonzalez, whose infant daughter died after doctors failed to recognize she had whooping cough, in the midst of a whooping cough epidemic.

Foes of Proposition 46 are pressing their case with an advertising blitz bankrolled largely by the malpractice insurance industry, by far the biggest contributor to the No-on-46 camp’s $56 million war chest. They’re trying to scare you away from Proposition 46’s common-sense solutions. They say health costs will go up, medical malpractice insurance premiums will skyrocket and doctors will leave the state or quit.

But they won’t offer evidence, because there is none. In three states where similar caps were struck down by courts in recent years, there have been no increases in malpractice premiums while the number of doctors per capita has actually gone up. California also enjoys an advantage: Proposition 103 has since 1988 given the state insurance commissioner the ability to control malpractice premiums.

Opponents of Proposition 46 want you to think this is all about the lawyers who represent victims in their quest for accountability. In fact, plaintiffs’ attorneys are the only chance malpractice victims have against the health industry’s army of defense litigators.

Proposition 46 is really about those victims of harm and making sure there will be fewer of them in the future. It deserves your yes vote because it will save lives. That could be yours or that of someone you love.

Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa, represents District 2 in the state Senate and is former chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.