Prop 12 backers stretch truth, too

Listen to the commercials in support of Proposition 12, and you'll get the idea that if Texans vote no on Sept. 13, your family doctor, neurosurgeon and anyone with a medical degree will fade into history.

Not so. The commercials, which feature Gov. Rick Perry's plea for passage, distort the implications of Prop 12. As a result, they risk misleading voters into supporting something they're sure to later regret.

The untold fact in these ads is that the Legislature already has capped non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases. This spring, the Legislature passed, this newspaper supported, and Gov. Perry signed into law a bill capping non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases at $750,000 per plaintiff. The law went into effect last Monday, along with scores of other bills enacted by the 78th Legislature. It was aimed specifically at halting the exodus of doctors from communities where they're needed.

The commercials backing Prop 12 don't tell you that, nor do those commercials mention that Proposition 12 reaches way beyond medical malpractice cases.

Backers argue that the constitutional amendment is needed to pre-empt lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Legislature's medical malpractice caps in order to abate a serious doctor shortage. We also lament an acute doctor shortage in South Texas and among certain high-risk specialties all across the state. This shortage is a reason we supported medical malpractice caps during the legislative session. But this amendment doesn't seek to just authorize caps on medical cases. It also would allow the Legislature to cap non-economic damages for virtually any civil action without the threat of a court declaring the action unconstitutional.

The Texas Legislature is a political body that depends on campaign contributions, and it is persistently lobbied by special interests seeking special concessions. Texans should worry that Prop 12 lays the groundwork for future Legislatures to enact potentially onerous caps without fear of a judicial rebuke. That's the sort of thing that might allow a polluter or a maker of a defective product to elude the financial reprimand it deserves.

There may come a time when a future Legislature will need to enact caps in certain other kinds of civil actions as it did to address the current medical malpractice crisis. But the threshold for enacting caps must be set high, necessitated by a public emergency and decided on a case-by-case basis. Most of all, the Legislature's actions must remain subject to court review.

Do you imagine that the docs sell their homes and pay the fines? No, their insurance goes up and they might not be able to afford it (the same goes for many of us without lawsuits), but they don't pay out of their own wallets.

BTW, doctors don't give blood to the patients, either. They write an order, a clerk transmits the order to the blood bank,where a lab technologist types and matches the blood. A nurse actually hooks the blood up to the patient's IV. The doctor probably never saw the blood, since it was given while the doctor was in his or her office, or in the ER or nursing home, just maybe at home. It is not necessary or financially feasible for the doctor to give the blood. The checks and double-checks are incredible in blood banking - 2 or 3 mistakes are required before the patient is injured.

As to the girl who came here from Mexico and died because she was given the wrong tissue-typed organs. The mistake was made at the donor site, not by the doctors who did the transplant. Somehow, the organs were mixed up and mislabeled. Again, this was a failure of many people long before the organs got to the patient (or the doctors.).

I don't know how to make anyone pay for a life. Even forgetting that no one person is actually responsible these last two cases, I don't know how to place a value on a life.

I think they opponents of Prop 12 try to conjure up scare scenarios to frighten voters. I voted "Yes."

One guy might have lost his penis, but there might be 15 people that die because they can't get a doctor.

Doctors say that they pay about 50% of their income to malpractice insurance. Who will want to sit through 10 years of schooling and accumulate hundred of thousands in school debt, just to pay half their salary to insurance?

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