Health Care & Hospital Law
May 2, 2013
Legislators should up damages cap to improve patient care
Physicians are far more likely to improve patient care if the Legislature increases the cap on noneconomic damages (adopted in 1975) to reflect inflation than by transferring oversight to the attorney general's office.
Bruce G. Fagel
Law Offices of Bruce G. Fagel & AssociatesPhone: (310) 516-9035
Email: brucefagel@fagellaw.com
Whittier College School of Law
Bruce G. Fagel is licensed to practice medicine and is founder of the Law Offices of Bruce G. Fagel & Associates. He served as a consultant on medical malpractice law to the California Judicial Counsel Committee, which wrote the new CACI jury instructions. He can be reached at brucefagel@fagellaw.com
The state Legislature is now considering legislation that would transfer the investigative and enforcement authority over California doctors from the Medical Board of California to the attorney general's office. The main reason cited for this transfer has focused on those physicians whose overprescribing of narcotic pain medications caused patient deaths. See LA Times, Apr. 26. However, the larger problem for public health is not the few doctors identified in an LA Times investigation th...
For only $95 a month (the price of 2 article purchases)
Receive unlimited article access and full access to our archives,
Daily Appellate Report, award winning columns, and our
Verdicts and Settlements.
Or
$795 for an entire year!
Or access this article for $45
(Purchase provides 7-day access to this article. Printing, posting or downloading is not allowed.)
Already a subscriber?
Sign In