Pubdate: Fri, 26 Sep 2014
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2014 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Bob Pack
Note: Bob Pack of Danville is the main proponent of Proposition 46.
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/testing.htm (Drug Testing)

PROP. 46 WILL PROTECT PATIENTS

When California adopted the initiative process in 1911 during an era 
of railroad robber barons, voters gained a vital tool to enact 
critically needed policy changes when recalcitrant legislators and 
powerful special interests stand in the way.

Proposition 46 is a compelling case in point. This measure, which I 
helped put on the Nov. 4 ballot, seeks to overcome health industry 
intransigence in the face of a national patient safety problem. The 
need for reform is beyond dispute. Each year, 440,000 patients die 
from preventable medical errors, the third-leading cause of death.

Meanwhile, more than 500,000 health care workers are battling drug or 
alcohol problems, and prescription narcotics abuse is the nation's 
fastest growing drug epidemic.

The medical industry has failed to respond. Lawmakers, under the 
influence of industry lobbyists and campaign cash, have done nothing. 
The media is largely mute, despite the massive death toll. Countless 
more victims are left maimed.

They're people like Tina Minasian of Roseville. Minasian underwent 
abdominal surgery and suffered for months as an infection caused by 
the procedure festered. She was left mutilated. Imagine her shock 
upon discovering the surgeon was an alcoholic participating in a 
medical board diversion program. His "monitor" was his own office 
manager, who dutifully ignored the physician's continued drinking. 
The doctor's alcohol problem finally cost him his license in 2012, a 
decade after Minasian's botched surgery.

Her experience was no anomaly. That's why we need Proposition 46.

The ballot measure would require drug and alcohol testing of doctors, 
just as we require of pilots and police. Testing is endorsed by the 
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general and 
Johns Hopkins University patient safety experts.

Addiction doesn't make doctors bad people. But it does make them a 
risk to our safety. Whether in an operating room or at hospital 
bedside, physicians hold a life in their hands. Is it too much to ask 
that they practice sober?

To fight prescription drug abuse, Prop. 46 mandates that doctors 
check California's database before authorizing powerful narcotics for 
the first time to patients; now fewer than one in 10 physicians bother.

It also adjusts the state's cap on malpractice damages to account for 
nearly four decades of inflation. This cap on pain and suffering, 
frozen since 1975, discriminates against children, the elderly and 
others lacking lost wages  a key metric for damages in malpractice 
cases. They're often without legal recourse, while negligent 
physicians are left unaccountable and undeterred.

Opponents of reform, including the wildly profitable malpractice 
insurance industry, stiff-arm compromise. Earlier this year, a 
partial legislative solution was at hand  a modest adjustment in the 
malpractice cap. But at the 11th hour, the medical lobby walked away.

My own push to mandate prescription database use was dashed in the 
Legislature by doctors' opposition. Why would doctors balk at using a 
life-saving tool? Facing such roadblocks while lives were at risk, we 
turned to the ballot box.

As the campaign rages, I hope you'll look beyond our foes' 
advertising blitz and consider the traumas experienced by people like 
me. My children, Troy and Alana, were run down along a road by a 
doctor-shopping prescription drug addict. The physicians who 
recklessly prescribed her thousands of pills were never held accountable.

Since their deaths, I've tried to work within the system. But like 
most ordinary Californians, I lack the clout to overcome the medical 
industry Goliath.

Now, voters have a slingshot. And the truth: When it comes to 
protecting patients from drug-addicted or negligent doctors, playing 
politics and erecting roadblocks to common-sense solutions is not 
only unacceptable, it's downright cruel.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom