POLITICAL ACTION — AND YOU — ARE VITAL TO PROTECTING PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT RIGHTS

By Robert Hertzka, MD

But even more important than all of that legislation are the actual legislators who vote on them. Politics may seem complex, and it can be, but the simple fact is that from the perspective of physicians and our patients, there are just two types of legislators. And those two types are not Democrats or Republicans, or liberals and conservatives.

From our perspective, there are legislators who see that there are problems in healthcare that need to be addressed, and from a combination of their life experiences and their gut feelings, they believe that physicians are going to be part of the solution to the problems in healthcare. And on the other side of the equation, there are those whose life experiences and gut feelings tell them that physicians are the problem.

This makes for a simple equation: If we can work with legislators and develop relationships such that most of them believe that we are part of the “solution” rather than being part of the “problem,” we will be more successful on that legislative scorecard.

EVERY YEAR THERE ARE LITERALLY THOUSANDS of bills introduced in the California Legislature, hundreds of which are tracked by the California Medical Association (CMA). The results of our efforts to support physician and patient-friendly legislation and oppose unfriendly legislation is written about in the pages of San Diego Physician just about every year. Many refer to this as the legislative scorecard of wins and losses.

Creating and maintaining those legislative relationships is where your San Diego County Medical Society (SDCMS) Legislative Committee comes in. An assiduously bipartisan group, each of whom has made a multi-year commitment to this process, we meet and educate the serious candidates for office as they emerge, with the goal of ultimately making an endorsement decision that leads to contributions from CALPAC, CMA’s political action committee.

This is a process that we at SDCMS have taken seriously for decades, and it has certainly paid dividends. Candidates seek us out early in the process, as an endorsement from the physician community is a coveted goal whether you are a Democrat or a Republican. And that relationship-building has also led to a much better legislative scorecard among San Diego legislators — both Democrat and Republican — than any other region of the state.

Currently we are represented by seven assemblymembers and four state senators, some of whom have districts that include parts of Orange or Riverside counties. Several have been in office for two years or more, while others, such as State Senators Catherine Blakespear (D-Encinitas) and Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) were just elected. As an example of our process, we began policy discussions with those two nowsenators back in March of 2021 (on COVID-lockdown-Zoom no less), and eventually, after multiple meetings with many of our committee members, we decided to endorse them — after which CALPAC made significant contributions to their campaigns. Both of these new state senators are far more knowledgeable about the issues that face physicians than they were back in March of 2021, and we look forward to both voting in a physician-favorable manner for many years.

California has strict term limits, and so we know when legislators will be “termed out” and create an open legislative seat. The candidates know this as well, which is why so many announce for the seats two years in advance. That was the case in 2022 for the two state senate seats that I just mentioned, and will be the case in 2024 for one more open state senate and two open state assembly seats. Notably, we started meeting with candidates for 2024 last October and are continuing this month as serious candidates in both parties are announcing.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not note that other good things happened for physicians in the electoral process in 2021 and 2022. One was that a San Diego assembly seat opened up in early 2021 after the incumbent was appointed to be the California secretary of state. That seat was won by our own Akilah Weber, MD (D), who ran against a wellknown opponent backed by hundreds of thousands of campaign dollars from labor unions. Dr. Weber succeeded with a combination of her own skillful campaign along with the campaign dollars from the California Medical Association as her primary backer.

And in the Bakersfield area, another similar scenario played out as another one of our own, Jasmeet Bains, MD (D), also won an open state assembly seat. She faced off against an incumbent county supervisor who was also heavily supported by labor unions, but again, the combination of her skillful campaign combined with the financial contributions of CALPAC tipped the scales in her favor.

It is important for all of you to know that there are physicians out there who are educating all of the candidates and succeeding in turning them into more physician-friendly ones. But to get these candidates into office, all of us need to both contribute to CALPAC and support local efforts that are supporting local physician-friendly candidates.

If you go to the website for the California Medical Association, under the Take Action section you can contribute to CALPAC (https://www.cmadocs.org/calpac) and at the Grassroots Action page (https://www.cmadocs.org/grassrootsaction-center) you can learn different ways to get involved both politically and legislatively.

If you have further questions or want to discuss becoming more politically involved with the San Diego County Medical Society and the California Medical Association, please contact SDCMS CEO Paul Hegyi at (858) 565-8888. Paul serves on the CALPAC Board and has more than 25 years of experience in California politics and public policy.

Dr. Hertzka is a past president of SDCMS and CMA, a twoterm past chair of CALPAC, a past chair of AMPAC, and a past chair of the AMA’s Health Policy Council. Recently retired from the clinical practice of anesthesiology after more than 35 years, he continues to serve as the chair of the SDCMS Legislative Committee, a role he has had since 1990. Dr. Hertzka has been a member of the California Medical Association for 43 years.