LA Times Endorsement: No on Proposition 46

◼ The healthcare issues Proposition 46 aims to solve should be addressed, but not the way the measure proposes - LA Times

...The most familiar element of Proposition 46 is the proposal to raise the cap on "pain and suffering" damages in medical malpractice cases. California imposed a $250,000 cap 39 years ago as part of a broader effort to limit malpractice insurance premiums, which doctors said were discouraging physicians from working in the state. Proposition 46 would raise the cap to roughly $1.1 million — what $250,000 in 1975 would be worth in today's dollars — and require it to keep pace with inflation.

...The right approach would be to raise the cap gradually and see if any problems emerge — for example, if lawsuits increase but clinics shut down and access to care shrinks, or if hordes of patients shift from clinics to hospital emergency rooms. But that's not the path Proposition 46 takes.

...The proposition's second major provision would require doctors and pharmacists to check CURES, a state database of prescriptions that have been filled, before prescribing or dispensing abuse-prone drugs to a patient for the first time. This provision would eliminate a glaring hole in CURES, which has been online since 2009: Pharmacists are required to report what they dispense, but no one is required to check those listings before doling out more drugs. Yet it would take the state weeks or months to register the roughly 170,000 healthcare providers who dole out dangerous drugs but haven't yet signed up for CURES. Proposition 46 ignores this reality, and would expose those who fail to check CURES to stiff penalties even if they weren't able to sign in.

...The Legislature can and should be faulted for not adjusting the cap on damages for pain and suffering, not requiring healthcare providers to check the CURES database and failing to improve the state Medical Board's troubled monitoring program for substance-abusing physicians. But the methods proposed by Proposition 46 to solve those problems have too many potential drawbacks to be worth the risk.