September 28, 2005

In response on I-336 and I-330

Some ballot initiatives can be a bit a dull and sometimes seemingly one-sided. A city wants a new fire truck, or some local municipality needs a new library. With statewide initiatives, however, the proverbial stakes are much higher. That’s particularly the case with two pressing initiatives on the ballot this fall, I-336 and I-330, both having to do with medical malpractice. My fellow blogger Natasha has made a fine case for I-336 and against I-330, backing up her points with some savvy arguments and supporting details. I agree with her on one point, but not on the other. Let me explain. All good debates should have at least one counterpoint, and I’ll endeavor to present an alternative to Natasha’s reasoning, articulate though it may be. This is especially important considering the vast sums of money, into the millions of dollars, that have been spent and will continue to be spent on this very heated political battle. First, let’s look at who’s thrown their political weight behind what. The Washington State Trial Lawyers Association (http://www.wstla.org/) hates the idea of putting a cap of $350,000 on pain and suffering awards in cases where doctors have been accused of injuring patients through malpractice. The reason is obvious: fewer trials plus less money equals a less lucrative environment for trial lawyers to operate in. That being said, I’m sure there are many good and honest trial lawyers who work hard on behalf of clients who have been genuinely injured by malevolent doctors (and no, lawyers are not evil!). But by and large, the reality is that the fear of lawsuits is forcing doctors to leave states around the country, including ours. So, the question comes down to, you guessed it, another question: do you want fewers doctors or fewer trial lawyers in our state? The Washington State Medical Association (http://www.wsma.org/) thinks I-330 is a good idea, and that in and of itself should at least warrant some attention as to why. This august organization represents more than 9,000 Washington state doctors, and wants to get I-330 approved so that physicians don’t have to work under a menacing cloud of litigation (http://www.yesoni330.org/aboutWhy.html), watching their collective backs half the time. Here: a doctor-blogger wrangles over the issue. Now, I disagree with the WSMA that I-336 is a bad idea. It seems to make perfect sense to me. Revoking the licenses of repeat offenders (those with three jury verdicts against them in 10 years and outlawing “secrecy agreements” in medical malpractice lawsuits), as Natasha points out, is a good idea. She’s wrong in her opposition to I-330 though. Let’s send the right message to our state’s honest doctors and not-so-honest trial lawyers, making it clear that we want them to stay and back off, respectively. It might be easy to leap to conclusions, but let’s just make sure we give both sides a fair shake (and not a milkshake, for that matter), on this issue. Respond

Posted by William Thomas Mari at September 28, 2005 11:57 PM Comments What does it mean to be red around here? Ronald Reagan once said that "I will never leave the Republican Party, but some day the Republican Party may leave me." Political parties and philosophy sometimes must part ways for short-term gain. I think that is the case here with "tort reform." Price fixing, whether it is for the rent of apartments, the price of food, or the decision of a jury for the life of a child, should forever be outside the scope and power of government. These are decisions left to the market and to us as a people. So fear not my left leaning friend, I am merely staying the course, even when those who are at the helm have temporarily gone astray. Yet I am not about to put flowers in my hair, ride a monorail to Ballard, or allow our own government to price gouge us at the pump in the middle of a oil crises. Sincerely, Your red island in the sea of blue. R's, D's , I's, and others respond Posted by Garrett Ryan Ferencz at September 28, 2005 10:37 PM Comments I-330 v. 1-336 The proponents of I-330 are insisting that capping non-economic damages will cut the medical malpractice insurance premiums our doctors pay. While increasing premiums are a serious problem, I think that damage awards paid to patients are the least part of the problem. Let’s leave aside, for a moment, the question of what economic damage a patient could claim if he was rendered unexpectedly sterile or was maimed in a way that didn’t interfere with his ability to work. Or, as fellow Backyard Blogger Garrett Ferencz pointed out the other day, the question of what non-economic damage means when a child who’s never earned any money dies due to possible medical negligence. The important question is whether or not limiting damage awards would help achieve the goal of lower premiums as the insurance companies claim. As a study quoted in the Washington Post points out, the state of Texas saw malpractice premiums rise while claims remained flat or declined from 1998-2002. Doctors’ premiums not only rose, they rose by 135 percent over that time period. I don’t see how anyone could claim with a straight face that the two numbers were connected, but the Texas legislature went and limited damage awards anyway in 2003. Closer to home, the nonprofit consumer interest group Public Citizen recently released a study of Washington State malpractice cases based on information from the federally maintained National Practitioner Databank. [Note: I’ve been looking for a public access point for the NPDB, but it doesn’t seem to have a web-based version I can get to. However, I consider Public Citizen credible] They claim that over the ten year period of 1991-2001, malpractice claims in the state actually dropped when adjusted for inflation. Further, when cost of living is taken into account, most Washington doctors pay about the same or less than doctors living in California, where a cap on damages has been instituted. If insurance companies are charging doctors more than any increase in claims justifies, perhaps to cover bad investment decisions, the local medical community should take the issue up with them and leave injured patients out of this fight. But if we must have cost-cutting, and it’s always a good idea where possible, the data gathered by Public Citizen points the way to a large savings. According to their research, just 488 repeat offender physicians in Washington have been responsible for 42.6 percent of claims made since 1990. They also found that the state medical board was very unlikely to take action against these doctors, putting Washington in the bottom fifth of states when it comes to disciplining reckless doctors who tarnish their profession. By their count, the cost of preventable medical errors in the state is at least three times the total paid in malpractice insurance. Enter I-336. It will do what our state review board has so far refused to consider, revoking the licenses of doctors who have three jury awards against them in ten years. As noted above, this is a tiny percentage of repeat offenders whose actions create a tremendous cost in both human suffering and financial loss. If nationwide numbers hold in Washington, a Public Citizen review of claims by repeat offenders shows that the 1.7 percent of doctors who have three or more claims against them were responsible for over 27 percent of all medical malpractice payouts. How long will it continue to be acceptable for profit-seeking corporations and well-heeled professional organizations to always and only be looking to trim their bottom lines at the cost of the public? There’s ample evidence that greater savings are to be gained from an examination of their own behavior. A vote of yes on I-336 and no on I-330 would send a message to the insurance companies and the state medical associations that patients in Washington don’t want to have to pay for other their carelessness. Have your say on medical practice - respond to the Backyard Blog Posted by Natasha Chart at September 28, 2005 08:30 PM Comments September 26, 2005 We pause now for the Backyard Bloggers to ask each other questions Will: Was this the first time you voted at the polls? As I read Primary Experiences , I tried to remember the last time I voted at the polls, and wondered what you thought about it. I guess I was suprised that you weren't voting by mail. Garrett: I must admit I didn't know what to expect for your first post of 2005 but I certainly wasn't expecting a tectonic shift in your beliefs. But I've got to wonder...is this really a polar shift for you? Or should I put my hope back on the shelf? Natasha: Nice to meet you. Since I'm coming from the same place as you supporting the gas tax, I guess my only question is, what the heck are we going to do if gas prices are above $3 in November? Ian Posted by Ian Stewart at September 26, 2005 04:36 PM Comments September 21, 2005 Primary experiences: (9-21-05) On the way to school yesterday, I drove out of my neighborhood and headed towards I-90 from Snoqualmie. As I pulled out of my intersection, I was greeted by no fewer than three of our local mayoral candidates (check out the interview our neighborhood “podcaster” had with them: http://www.joegivens.com/SnoqualmiePodcast.htm), all holding their bright signs and waving to every car that passed along, including mine. Feeling a surge of civic pride, I honked my horn in all three of their general directions, and was rewarded with three very enthusiastic return waves. All three gentlemen were standing at different corners of the intersection, but they all seemed to get along quite well with one other. As I drove on, I saw the three talking (or rather, shouting) across the street in a congenial manner. Later that afternoon, after a bit of guesswork, I found my polling place literally around the corner from my house. It was quiet: I was told by several affable poll workers that I was the 14th voter to stop by that day, and was ushered to my polling booth with no problems. I observed (and was observed by) a clearly alert election observer. The process was smooth and everything looked as professional as possible. Talking to a few of my friends and classmates, they observed the same thing at their various polling locations around the county. After dinner, I drove my mom to the polling place and passed Matt Larson, one of the three candidates, on the same corner I had seen him that morning. He had a huge crew of family and friends out in the twilight, hopping up and down with less than an hour to go. As it turns out, he did pretty well for himself and garnering the most votes of the day. He’ll be facing another qualified fellow, Michael Lewandowski, come November. Having all three men come from my neighborhood put a right neighborly spin on the whole process, and the nonpartisan race has been handled in a low-key and classy manner. Let’s hope that the friendly attitude of one small town’s election can spread to other areas around the Eastside. Was it a silky smooth election in your backyard? Let us know Posted by William Thomas Mari at September 21, 2005 03:52 PM Comments September 20, 2005 Backyard Blogger Garrett Ferencz returns A view from the trenches Although we turn on the news every day and hear of those who died in a hurricane, or a war very far away, death holds a different grip when you stare it in the face. As a young lawyer I have had to come to grips with cases involving child abuse, rape, and a whole host of things that you quickly attempt to put in the compartment of your mind labeled “work” in order to come home and still greet your new wife with a smile. However one case this year changed everything, a case I still cannot put out of my mind, a case I now feel compelled to share as your faithful conservative blogger, as all of us enter what may otherwise be an uneventful election cycle. This was a case that turned my “political bent” upside down. I entered our conference room and was greeted by two people in tears. They had come to us because their six-year old son had died. A diminutive woman sat beside a passive man, both cried quietly. The woman could not even speak. The man in broken English began to describe to us how his son had developed a tooth infection, then a swelling. In choked words he talked at first slowly and than he picked up speed, describing what he thought was a fever for days caused by a January flu. Visits to the doctor with nothing but an assurance that it just a flu, that his son just had a tooth ache. As the days passed his son got worse. His fever continued to climb, the doctors continued to ignore the signs. His son had sepsis (an infection that spread into the blood). Finally, this six year old’s body was overwhelmed, his fever went up to 107 and the child entered a comma, never to wake again. Both father and mother stood over their once vibrant child in a Seattle hospital and had to make the decision just days later to end his life support. Days after they buried him. All because a doctor was negligent. A $15 dollar of penicillin would have likely saved his life. The parents of this child had no money to pay our fees. They were not even truly seeking money for their child. The parents wanted justice. They wanted good lawyers that could stand up to the doctors. They needed our help. Ahead of us was years of litigation, hundreds of thousands of dollars to be spent on experts, depositions, and court fees. The very real chance of losing a case that most lawyers lose. Before Initiative 330 we said yes to this case, and many like it. Of course there was no wages lost for a six year old child. When an infant dies there is no “economic value.” However to these parents who had lost everything such comparisons are sickening. After initiative 330 we will say no, as the costs of the case itself will far outpace the insurance companies cap. So as the conservative blogger I was asked to write something meaningful about this year’s election. I thought about the drama of whether the monorail will ever relieve the poor Scandinavians desperate to make it from their homes in Ballard into the city. Or whether Gregoire's gas tax was a brilliant idea in the mist of an oil shortage. Or whether any one will actually vote this year at all. Then I thought again of this six year old child. I guess there is a reason for me to vote. I guess all of this really does matter. Posted by Garrett Ryan Ferencz at September 20, 2005 07:16 PM Comments Backyard Blogger Ian Stewart is Back The Monorail is Dead, Long Live the Monorail It’s like a recurring nightmare, a skipping record (our parents used them to listen to music, you whippersnapper). We’re going for a record fifth vote for one project. We never got a do-over on the 2000 Presidential Election or the 2004 Washington Governor’s race, but somehow that specter with scythe sent to destroy our dream from the 1962 World’s Fair keeps rising from the dead. Are we destined to dither? Sentenced to stand still? Or maybe, as many have said before, we’re just too darn nice. I don’t think it’s any of those. I think we’ve just been having the wrong argument. It’s not Monorail or no Monorail, it’s transit or no transit. The Monorail was tested and won four times in our city. Seattle voters were speaking, no, SHOUTING “We want transit options!” with each vote. So if we’re going to vote again, fine. But let’s use the money we’re already collecting, and keep collecting it. But with this summer’s revelations, I could care less if the money actually goes to build a Monorail. And I’d bet most other Seattle voters aren’t ambivalent like me…they’re probably more like the citizens of Springfield ready to run anyone connected to the Monorail out of town (or at least stop giving them their money). It’s possible, that with strong leadership from someone, the Monorail could survive. But I’m not willing to risk transportation gridlock in Seattle and another thirty years of doing nothing on the chance that we’ll turn around the opinions of the voters on the Seattle Monorail Project. Let’s send our piggy bank and future allowance to a place that, like the Monorail, has had its share of financial problems, but has already figured out how to fix them and is stronger for it. Let’s send the money to Sound Transit, who is already responsible for regional transit. Let’s hand over the right of way to our streets, with the string attached that whatever is built with our cash must be in Seattle. Let’s connect West Seattle and Ballard to the line already under construction (Yes! Something actually is being built here! to the Airport, Northgate, the U-District, and everywhere in between. We’re sick of traffic. We need transit options now. We know more people are coming to Seattle for the same reasons others have come, and others have stayed. The Monorail is Dead, Long Live the Monorail. Anyone know a good initiative drafter? Posted by Ian Stewart at September 20, 2005 06:08 PM Comments Introducing Backyard Blogger Natasha Chart A Few Ounces of Prevention Washington State’s last legislature passed a modest (.095 per gallon) gas tax to shore up the state’s crumbling bridges and roads, with funding slated for over 700 projects. The proponents of I-912 want everyone to think this was a waste of money and they’re asking voters to overturn the legislation. Even before hurricane Katrina provided the country with an object lesson in why we must invest in infrastructure before disaster strikes, I had a hard time believing that I-912 wasn’t just a prank being played on voters. In 1994, I was living close enough to the epicenter of the Northridge earthquake in California to be rudely awakened by the walls shaking around me at about 4:30 am. Years of weekly school drills kicked in and I was standing startled in a doorway before I was even awake, waiting for the freight train to stop. In the next county over, there were nearly sixty people who didn’t make it through and thousands who were injured. Many of the deaths were due to cost-cutting construction, and many of the dead lived in the Northridge Meadows apartment buildings. Imagine two identical three-story apartment complexes standing next to each other. Imagine waking up the next morning to discover that one of them had suddenly become a two-story building. A friend’s mother lived on the second floor of the collapsed building and managed to get out with minor scrapes. The college student living directly below her was taken out in a body bag. Two sections of freeway and a three-story parking garage also collapsed completely and no one could stop talking about how lucky it was that the tremor happened so early in the morning. Until that day, there hadn’t seemed to be anything wrong with Northridge Meadows Apartments, the parking garage at Cal State Northridge, or the Antelope Valley and Santa Monica Freeway overpasses that came down in heaps. For a brief while, everyone in Los Angeles County developed an intense interest in building codes and seismic retrofitting. This always happens after a disaster, just as it’s happening now in New Orleans. All those civil engineering arguments finally get translated into English: cash now, or more cash and possibly many lives later. Safety becomes the new hotness. The Puget Sound doesn’t get hurricanes, but we do get earthquakes, high winds and floods. Roads and bridges all over the state are reaching the end of their useful lives, which is as dangerous as having been built poorly in the first place. Erosion is a serious issue in many counties, undermining roads and increasing the risk of flooding when the silt fills local waterways. As alarming as it is to wonder whether or not a freeway bridge might pancake in the middle of rush hour some day, a low or no-casualty disaster involving a major road could hurt state and local economies. And then there are the private disasters, the ones that don’t affect enough people to make a big splash in the headlines. Motorists can be needlessly injured all over the state even now because of roads that don’t have the sorts of basic safety improvements funded by the Legislature to lessen the chance of accidents. In voting no on I-912, Washington voters can make the decision to lessen the pain of the inevitable natural disaster and the steady decay of time. It would be a vote to feel relieved later when our bridges can withstand seismic rumblings and our highways can stick it out through hail and high water. Also, and this just seems like icing on the cake, the few extra pennies per gallon called for by the state gas tax will go neither to oil company extortionists nor the Saudi government. They’ll be creating jobs in Washington State and a good environment for state businesses. Seems like a good deal to me. Posted by Natasha Chart at September 20, 2005 05:57 PM Comments Will Mari, Backyard Blogger is back Election season is upon us again, and this being only the second time I’ve been able to vote (at 20), I’m looking forward to looking over the races and trying to make some reasonable decisions. Remembering how the governor’s race played out last year: yes, every vote does count. That’s not just a trite expression; it’s the hard truth. Dino Rossi didn’t become governor by fewer than 150 votes! It was so close, if all my classmates in two of my courses had voted for one or the other candidate, it would’ve been a whole different story. The vote tallies aren’t the only thing I’m looking forward to this fall. Last year was my first election and it was quite exciting, really. Bush vs. Kerry and the senatorial races were some heady things to think about. But now it’s time for more local issues, the “hum-drum” stuff that will require more than just the thrill of watching the “big” elections go down. I guess you could say this is a more-grown election for me, but you couldn’t tell from the voters pamphlet. It looks plain silly! I mean, having two cute, effervescent cartoon characters guide us through the complexities of the primary might be well-meaning, but what is this, elementary school? Penny Pen and Patty Paper seem nice enough, and yes, King County Elections is trying to reach the lowest-common denominator. Instead of a businesslike “this is how you vote” ethos, however, the overall effect is slightly goofy and rather humorous. But if the voters guide looks a little childish, the issues at stake are not. The county executive is an influential office, up for grabs, with David Irons mounting a good campaign to unseat incumbent Ron Sims. Sims is seemingly running on autopilot for yet another term, and could easily get the boot if he can’t connect to King County voters ASAP. Plus, there are multiple council seats open, a tax levy, a bond measure and the sheriff’s seat up in the air. Who wins and who doesn’t isn’t just some boring spectacle, but it’s real money and real consequences for real people. We all need to get out there and vote, but before we do, we ought to sit down and read that voters’ pamphlet, read the newspaper and watch the candidates on TV. The most important thing we can all do though, I think, is to talk these races over with our friends, neighbors and co-workers. Sure there are party politics involved, but there’s really more at stake. I’m a proud young Republican, and unashamedly so, but our backyard’s leadership is about to shift and change, and it’s up to us to make it happen. Let’s make some informed choices, shall we? Stay tuned to us here to the Backyard Blog as we have some lively discussions. Posted by William Thomas Mari at September 20, 2005 05:23 PM Comments Marketplace Jobs Autos Shopping Homes Rentals Post an ad July 2006 S M T W T F S             1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31           ARCHIVES November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 RECENT ENTRIES In response on I-336 and I-330 What does it mean to be red around here? I-330 v. 1-336 We pause now for the Backyard Bloggers to ask each other questions Primary experiences: (9-21-05) Backyard Blogger Garrett Ferencz returns Backyard Blogger Ian Stewart is Back Introducing Backyard Blogger Natasha Chart Will Mari, Backyard Blogger is back Powered by Movable Type 3.2 seattletimes.com home Home delivery | RSS feeds | Low-graphic | Search archive Site map | webmaster@seattletimes.com | Contact us | Privacy statement | Terms of service NWclassifieds | NWsource | Advertise with us | The Seattle Times Company Back to top