Posted: 11/7/2005 1:02:25 PM EDT
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Initiative 330,336 & Resolution 8207??? Anyone have an opinion? 
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I'm voting yes on I-330 and 336. I-330. Putting caps on non economic damage awards. With 336, I think its a good idea to make the bad docs go away. If some don't know what 336 is, in a nutshell, if a doctor looses a malpractice suit 3 times in 10 years, then he/she looses their license. Its a bit more involved than this, but this is the major point to I-336 Also voting yes on I-912, I-900 and a big NO on I-901 |
Interesting...I hadn't heard much about what was behind 336... |
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Link to 8207 Link to: 330 330 336 336 link from the criminal association Published in the TNT: October 16th, 2005 12:01 AM Link Washington’s medical malpractice law is a mess: It drives up costs and drives out doctors. Because medical malpractice is a difficult and highly technical policy area that requires balancing a variety of public needs, reforms should come from professional lawmakers rather than special interests. Unfortunately, our none-too-effective Legislature didn’t get its act together to rewrite the laws governing the malpractice system, so Washington trial lawyers have put Initiative 336 on the Nov. 8 ballot, and Washington doctors have come up with Initiative 330. Instead of a reform from the Legislature focusing on the public’s needs, we’re faced with initiatives from two special interest groups. (Looking at I-336 and I-330, one can’t help but wish that the doctors and lawyers had just taken out their aggression toward each other on the golf course, instead of putting the public in the middle.) When economists analyze a new law, we don’t much care about whether the law is well-intentioned or not. Instead, we try to think through how it creates new incentives that will lead to changes in people’s behavior. For now, let’s look at a critical incentive change built into the lawyers’ bill, I-336, and leave I-330 for another time. A key provision in I-336 is a new “three strikes, you’re out” rule. Under this provision, if a doctor loses three malpractice suits in a 10-year period, the state revokes his license. Yanking a medical license is not based on findings of the state medical board but on the judgment of citizen juries. At the sound-bite level, throwing out bad doctors seems like a dandy idea. But if you dig into the historical record, you discover that very, very few doctors in the state of Washington have ever reached the three-strikes malpractice limit. Early in the debate, Washington’s largest malpractice insurer reported that it had exactly zero clients who had hit this limit. So for protecting us from bad doctors, the three-strikes provision in I-336 is all bark, no bite. You might think an “all bark” provision is harmless if annoying. But the three-strikes rule isn’t as harmless as it seems. The danger is in the way the rule changes lawyers’ incentives to be reasonable in pursuing malpractice suits. The three-strikes provision may well raise medical costs in the state, and everyone in Washington who sees a doctor will end up footing the bill. The story begins with the fact that all doctors make mistakes. Consider the following scenario under the current malpractice law. A patient suffers a small injury – an injury for which we’ll imagine that $5,000 is fair compensation. An aggressive attorney takes the case, filing suit for $25,000. Under the current system, the doctor or the doctor’s insurance company offers to settle for $5,000. If the case goes to court, both sides know that the judgment is likely to be around $5,000, so both sides have an incentive to settle for close to $5,000 and avoid running up expensive lawyer time. Usually, the case settles with fair compensation. Under the proposed three-strikes provision, three $5,000 judgments would mean the end of a doctor’s career. One critical incentive has changed: The doctor now has an extremely strong incentive to avoid a court judgment for any amount. The aggressive attorney knows that the doctor has a strong incentive to settle rather than let the case go to final judgment. So the attorney says, fork over the whole $25,000 or we’ll go to trial. The doctor faces the choice of paying $25,000 in settlement costs, or of paying $5,000 at trial plus eating one of his three strikes. A lot of doctors will choose to pay $25,000 to settle a $5,000 case and avoid a court judgment. Guess who they’re going to pass the additional costs to? You and me. The three-strikes provision introduces a form of legal blackmail. We won’t see many doctors with three strikes, because they’ll all learn to settle first. What we will see is a lot of minor cases ending up in medium-size, out-of-court settlements. And the citizens of Washington state will be paying the bill. When it comes to I-336, take your doctor’s advice – and an economist’s advice, too – and vote no. Dick Startz is Castor Professor of Economics at the University of Washington. He can be reached at [email protected]. |
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I voted no on both 330 and 336. As has been mentioned, both were authored by special interest groups (basically.) Each has provisions that I find offensive, and I won't accept "just anything" to get some reform. Once a law is on the books, it is very hard to get rid of it. It does happen, but not always. I think the Legislature should do its job on these issues. They are obviously shirking their responsibilities, while not listening to their constituents at the same time. There are far too many initiatives on the ballot. Some are because of inaction by the Legislature (330 and 336), and others are because they didn't listen to use (912.) Oh, and I voted to screw the smokers, sorry. |
