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Home / Washington Business - March/April 2005 / Points of View: Your Choice: Competent Doctors or Enriched Personal Injury Lawyers |
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Points of View: Your Choice: Competent Doctors or Enriched Personal Injury Lawyers |
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Written On: March/April 2005 |
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Written By: By Kenneth Isaacs, M.D. - President, Washington State Medical Association |
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Dr. Kenneth Isaacs is a Neurologist in private practice in Walla Walla for the last 21 years, having attended the University of California, Princeton University and other institutions. The WSMA, a member of AWB, has more than 6,000 member physicians representing all specialties and all medical practice models.
Dr. Isaacs has served as president of the Walla Walla Valley Medical Society, working with physician-hospital relationships. He is a member of the St. Mary Medical Center Governing Board, having served on the board for nine years, and has previously been chief of staff at the hospital.
He has initiated programs such as World Health Volunteers and contributed service to various community boards.
Two critical initiatives are before the 2005 Legislature.
One — Initiative 330, sponsored by Doctors for Sensible Lawsuit Reform — will enact meaningful tort reform. The other — Intiative-336, sponsored by personal injury attorneys — would tilt the tort system even further to their benefit and enrichment.
The Legislature can pass these initiatives, do nothing, or amend them. In the latter two cases, the initiatives will go on the November 8, 2005 ballot. Physicians, nurses, patients and the business community across the state (including AWB and the Liability Reform Coalition) endorse I-330 and oppose I-336.
How did it come to this? First, reasonable reforms were passed in the Senate only to die in the House Judiciary Committee last year and in 2003. Reform supporters were then left with one viable option — an initiative.
In short, I-330 will:
• Preserve access to necessary medical care.
• Get more money to the injured patient (about $200,000 more on a settlement or award of $1 million) by virtue of a sliding scale cap on attorneys’ contingency fees.
• Fully compensate all economic damages for patients who have suffered due to negligence.
• Bring reasonableness to outlandish jury awards with a cap on non-economic damages of between $350,000 and $1 million.
• Streamline the tort process by allowing arbitration and mediation.
• Guarantee payment to the injured patient over time (periodic payments).
• Fairly apportion fault in medical malpractice cases (joint and several liability).
• Allow juries to be made aware of other compensation received by the injured patient.
It was quite another story for the personal injury attorneys. Last summer their president threatened retaliation if we persisted in our efforts. We went ahead with I-330; the personal injury attorneys retaliated with I-336, the most egregious and cynical initiative this state has ever seen. I-336 would:
• Create an unneeded, expensive bureaucratic state-run insurance company.
• Effectively kill peer review activities that exist now, undermining efforts to improve patient safety and to reduce errors and making it easier for attorneys to troll for suits.
• Extort earlier and more lucrative settlements by applying a “three-strikes” provision to physicians who have had three or more judgments in 10 years.
This last provision deserves special mention: the personal injury attorneys say they only want to go after “bad” doctors. But in fact, none of the more than 5,400 physicians insured by Physicians Insurance, the state’s largest liability insurer, has had three judgments in the past 10 years. And if the settlement is out of court it doesn't count. The personal injury lawyers' actual purpose is to threaten defendants before trial into easy, quick, high out-of-court settlements. It is all about their profits, not justice.
Follow the Money
I-330 is being funded by hundreds of physicians, hospitals and other members of the state’s health care community. I-336 is being funded exclusively by the Washington State Trial Lawyers Association.
Of course, the personal injury attorneys say they have a “consumer coalition” behind their initiative, but the Public Disclosure Commission reports that all of the money raised and spent as of early February on I-336 (more than $725,000) has come from one source — WSTLA.
As a small businessman in independent practice, I know what the corrosive tort system does to my community’s business environment and to its residents’ access to needed medical care. I-330 is the first step in the larger effort to restore sanity to our legal system.
Please urge your legislators to support I-330 and oppose I-336, and do the same when you go to the polls on November 8, 2005.
To learn more about I-330, log on to www.yesoni330.org.
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