News
Money talks: Props. 45, 46 down sharply
In the face of $150 million in opposition spending, two ballot measures to regulate health insurance insurance rates, require drug testing for doctors and ease caps on medical malpractice awards have declined sharply in popular support, according to the final Field Poll of this year’s election.
Both measures, Propositions 45 and 46, were placed on the ballot by Consumer Watchdog, a Santa Monica-based activist group. Proposition 45 would allow the state insurance commissioner to regulate health insurance rates. Proposition 46 would raise a $250,000 limit –set in 1975 – on medical malpractice awards and require doctors to be drug tested.
Both measures, the most hotly contested measures on the Nov. 4 ballot, received public support during the summer, but a fall spending blitz against the proposal has changed voters’ perceptions of the two measures, the poll noted. The poll and its methodology are available here.
“In the latest poll, voters have moved to vote No on both measures,” said pollsters Mark DiCamillo and Mervin Field. “In the case of Prop. 45, 30 percent of likely voters are now in favor, while 42 percent are opposed and 28% remain undecided. On Prop. 46, 32 percent are intending to vote Yes, 49 percent are on the No side and 19 percent are undecided. Both measures were supported by wide margins in the summer.”
Financial disclosure documents on file with the secretary of state report that some $57 million has been spent against Proposition 45 and about $94 million has been spent to defeat Proposition 46. Most of the money has come from health insurers, medical providers, physicians groups and others.
About $15 million has spent in favor of the two initiatives, much of it from consumer groups, attorneys and their allies.
In other ballot measures, Proposition 1, the $7.5 billion water bond, was leading more than 2-to-1 with 54 percent of the vote, but with more than a fifth of the voters still undecided.
Proposition 47, a sentencing reform measure to lower the numbers of non-violent offenders from prison, received 51 percent support, but with more than a fifth of the electorate undecided.
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Sad. Perfect example of how $$ can result in people voting against their own best interest.
Don’t trust field polls, the way questions are asked can suggest the answers. Both Prop 46 and 45 which are in the public’s interest and had the majority of the public’s support before big profit insurance companies started spending over $100 million to spread misleading advertisements against them.
Wall Street greed has given us what is by far the most costly and inefficient health care system in the world and we must pay Big Insurance for it or be fined. Wall Street has also given us forced vaccine courts where a child’s vaccine death is worth only 250K. It also has denied families in states with low non-economic medical malpractice caps, such as California, any justice and accountability in wrongful death cases of jobless Family members.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans die yearly as the result of preventable medical negligence. Common hospital malpractice errors include: incorrect medication/dosage, surgical mistakes, preventable infections, diagnosis failures, birth delivery mistakes, anesthesia errors and under/over treatment. Americans are prescribed twice the drugs as Europeans and we are not any healthier or live any longer for it(Vioxx caused 60K deaths).
Prop 46 is not about trial lawyers vs doctors; it’s about patient and public safety at the expense of a modest reduction in profits to malpractice insurance companies that make billions. And P46 is about public justice which is currently being denied to you.
In 1975 malpractice insurance companies backed the California MICRA law which capped the non-economic “pain and suffering” award to 250K with no adjustment for inflation and this unjust law has now reduced the value of your jobless family members(children, retirees, ect) to essentially zero as you can not obtain a lawyer in any wrongful death malpractice case for them. Except in a very rare punitive award this is the only award available.
Malpractice attorneys will not take these wrongful death cases because the MICRA law also limits the attorney award to about 30%(BPC 6146) or about $75K of any maximum $250K award and attorney and medical expert costs in a case will quickly exceed $75K, search on “caps harm California” and “protectconsumerjustice org how micra came to be”.
Governor Brown who signed MICRA into law said 17 years later that MICRA did not lower health care costs and only enriched insurers and placed negligent or incompetent physicians outside the reach of judicial accountability. Ralph Nader has reminded Governor Brown’s of this earlier statement and has asked him to support Prop 46. Erin Brockovich and patient safety organizations support P46.
The MICRA cap and low non-economic damage caps in many other states have enabled malpractice insurance companies to earn billions in profits by essentially eliminating their monetary liability in these cases. It’s no wonder malpractice insurance companies have spent tens of millions to defeat Prop 46 which doesn’t even eliminate the cap, only adjusts it for inflation.
California malpractice insurance companies profit an incredible 70 cents for every dollar collected in malpractice premiums which leaves plenty of room for an increase in malpractice payouts without a rate increase to doctors.
P46 will not cause healthcare costs to skyrocket. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office calculates the increased cost at less than 0.5%. 22 other states do not have a non-economic damage cap and medical insurance rates are not any higher in those states nor are there shortages of physicians.
Since 1988 Prop 103 has regulated doctors malpractice insurance premiums and can not be increased unless justified with the Insurance Commissioner.
California drivers do not have a law that eliminates their liability if they kill a jobless person in a car accident and neither should negligent medical professionals and their insurance companies. When there isn’t accountability there isn’t a deterrent to avoid repeating negligence.
Prop 46 also includes testing doctors for drug and alcohol which is done in the transportation industry, the military and in other public safety related occupations. Certainly it is in the public’s interest for doctors to be thinking clearly when they have our lives in their hands.
Over prescribing of prescription narcotics is now a national epidemic. The Centers for Disease Control cited 475,000 emergency room visits and 36,000 deaths from prescription narcotic overdoses in a recent year, at a price tag of $72 billion in avoidable health care expenditures.
Prop 46 will also require physicians to check the state’s existing and secure DOJ CURES prescription drug database before prescribing narcotics and other addictive drugs to curb doctor-shopping drug abusers, to prevent over-dose deaths and to reduce harmful behavior and health care costs.
PLEASE VOTE YES ON PROPOSITION 46 for Public Safety and Patient Justice.
TL;DR
Prop 46 is simply a Trojan Horse for ambulance chasing personal injury and medical malpractice lawyers. it’s precisely the type of proposition that has made CA’s voter initiative process a joke. Let’s hope the momentum continues through Tuesday.
You’re mistaking car accident attorneys with medical negligence attorneys…they are not at all the same! Only Med/Mal attorneys have a sliding cap put on their fees, which makes it next to impossible for them to accept medical negligence cases…they most assuredly aren’t chasing ambulances.
You really should be informed before you stick your foot in your mouth.
Thank you.
Captain Nitpick: change your name to “Captain Dick Dick.” I hope you, your wife, and children (if you found anyone unhappy enough to procreate with you – all fall victim to medical malpractice
Really? If you were injured you wouldn’t agree. 250k is a joke. Thats a years salary for a doctor- but not much if you negligently maim someone for life.
Unlimited damages for _economic_ and _medical_ losses, Will. Sharpen up your data set.
My beef isn’t so much with the issue as it is with the intiative and the initiative process. If the malpractice lawyers have a compelling case about the $250K cap, then make it in the Legislature. And make the case on the merits of the issue: don’t decorate it with crap like drug testing doctors.
That’s right, don’t trust the polls, but instead trust the shady joepublicsaftey who will want to drug test you next.
Thinking you can improve patient safety by empowering malpractice attorneys is like thinking you can improve marriage by paying divorce lawyers for more. Pure fantasy. Lacks common sense. Luckily the average Californian is much smarter than that.
Why would you choose a screen name of “joepublicsaftey” and an avatar that makes you look like a stalker?
why would you put your ugly face on this website and make us all lose our lunch from barfing?
ak123,
“Thinking you can improve patient safety by empowering malpractice attorneys is like thinking you can improve marriage by paying divorce lawyers for more.”
Placing immutable tort limits on doctors proven to be negligent by courts is not an efficient, or morally sound, way of protecting patients from negligence. Prop. 46 aims to readjust the noneconomic damages cap so it properly adjusts for inflation, in which the $250,000 has remained fixed since the passage of the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act in 1975. Furthermore, the LAO has come out in saying the increases to health care are “.1 to .5 percent.” In other states that have higher or no caps at all, there has not been the claimed exodus of doctors from the states, or been the opposite effect of an increased physician supply. Prop. 46 does not remove the ceiling, but simply raises it so victims of this generation can have the same compensation and treatment as those who were victims in 1975. For a better analogy than yours of marriage, take the minimum wage in 1975, and imagine it being fixed at $2.50.
As much as opponents of Prop.46 denigrate it as a scheme devised by trial lawyers, they have spent millions of dollars from Big Insurance and unions to stop what is really common sense reform. In the Legislative Analyst’s Office analysis, nothing is mentioned about the historically low combined loss ratios–payout divided by premiums earned– below thirty percent that are turned into profits. Many of the doctor testimonies mention that their premiums will go up if Prop. 46 passes, neglecting the fact the people who told them are the insurers themselves, who have no incentive to say otherwise. I also suggest reading up who the State Insurance Commissioner of California and how it is in their power to control unjustified increases to malpractice insurance rates. Big Insurance have shielded their profits, kept doctors from being accountable to the judicial system, and attempted to deprive the chance for victims of malpractice for just compensation.
Additionally, drug testing doctors following adverse events is important to protect patients. How can a person deny that testing doctors for substance abuse, something practiced in even minimum wage jobs at your local grocery store, be a negative for an industry that deals with addicting pharmaceutical drugs and precious lives everyday? Having doctors consult a database starting in 2016 will certainly work to interdict the doctor shoppers and potential mis-prescriptions of medicine that doctors can err in making.
Prop. 46 empowers victims of malpractice to attain just compensation, especially those who are too young to have a job or incur medical costs in the event they die because of court-ruled medical negligence. While preventable medical errors continue to be the third leading cause of patient deaths in hospitals, Big Insurance has made MICRA a Sacred Cow, infallible of criticism of reform.
Also, your poor analogy to divorce and marriage is irrelevant. How does children and adults who are left disabled (e.g. paraplegics), or worse dead, because of a negligent physician relevant to two people manage their personal relationships?
Ha. The typical lawyer response. If u have no point baffle them with five pages of boiler plate BS.
Ha. The typical response of one that doesn’t have the acumen to understand the discussion at hand.
Psst., Will,
You might be a little slow on the uptake, but it appears the average Californian isn’t. Prop 46 is toast. It’s just unclear whether it is burnt to a crisp or not.
Because one always wins a debate with ad hominem. Since when is popularity equivocal to what is correct or best? Its not.
Oh, and when you tell me “no acumen to understand the discussion at hand,” that’s not an ad hominem? Psst., Will, you are being hypocritical.
You cant be serious. 250k is nothing if you are injured for a lifetime. Of course higher potential punishment hinders negligence. The one lacking common sense is you.
Think whatever you like. If prop 46 passes, you will be paying the price in terms of excessive testing and excessive expenses. It’s a free society. You can pass whatever legislation you want and face its consequences. Oh, P.S., the cap for economic and medical damages is _unlimited._
LOL. No I wont. You do not understand the issue.
I fully do and so does the budget office that puts the cost at hundreds of millions. Why do you think no one is supporting this thing and the “sweetener” drug testing was added to try to make this pig of a proposition fly?
The LAO puts the costs from tens to hundreds of millions. Do you know why ak123? Because local and state government provide a lot of health services to needy individuals, they will also be covering these potential costs which also mean costs won’t be directly borne by poorer patients that critics have argued would lose their insurance.
Also, ad hominem attacks, such as a “lawyer response” and “boiler plate bs” as atk123 have used towards people with different, well-founded, opinions reflects upon you and the respect you have for others, including victims of malpractice. People who lack real substance resort to mudslinging, as atk123 has truly demonstrated.
Interestingly, the higher the level of education and higher the level of earning, the less a voter supports prop 46. Oh, I am sorry, are the field and Hoover polls ad homenims also?
Tuesday will finally be decide these controversial props.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHa9jQ-93BY
Why treat medical malpractice victims differently and far worse than victims of products liability defects, truck driver negligence, or construction defects? Only a doctor gets away cheaply in this state? It was supposed to bring down health costs in the 70’s but never did. Instead, medical malpractice is the leading cause of death in this state – and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
Don’t be swayed by polls: the field poll was taken of Republican white elderly voters so not really representative of this State. As we saw when Obama was re-elected, those are not the people who show up at the polls. YES ON PROP 46!!!! We can now ensure medical malpractice does not go unchecked in this State. Time for people whose lives were ruined by a negligent doctor to finally get more than $250,000.
Oh be swayed, be very swayed.
The newest polls put prop 46 at being crushed either by 17% or 11%. And interestingly, the more you earn and the more educated you are, the more likely you are to vote against it.
I guess the SEIU and Planned Parenthood are lumped in with “elderly white Republican guys”. No wonder you lawyers did so well! Think of another way to trick people in order to fatten your wallets next time.
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