A message from our President > Raghunath Reddy, MD
MICRA Under Attack Again!!! MICRA opponents are at it again and have succeeded in making it a ballot measure as a proposition (# to assigned in July 2022) that will be on the ballot in the November election. Most of you may recollect the Proposition 46 of 2014 election year wherein we were successful in our campaign to defend MICRA. The trial lawyers are at it again to overthrow MICRA with a new measure named “FIPA” with disastrous consequences for the healthcare industry, physicians, and patients, if they prevail. Our society has grown since 2014 and there are quite a few new, young physicians who may not be well versed on MICRA and how it has helped in keeping malpractice premiums, health insurance premiums at a manageable level, in addition to umpteen other benefits such as minimizing and/or eliminating frivolous lawsuits. Therefore, I feel it is time to revisit and educate about MICRA and galvanize the physician community to put up a united front to defend it. MICRA- Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) was the result of a massive campaign in mid-1970’s spearheaded by the CMA, channeling the frustrations of physicians due to spiraling costs of Medical malpractice which were resulting from frivolous lawsuits, excessive jury awards, massive increases in Malpractice premiums threatening the viability of many specialties practices Physicians were left with few choices and none of them acceptable: Raise fees, drop their professional liability insurance coverage, leave the state, or quit practicing medicine. The CMA campaign was successful in persuading the then Governor Jerry Brown to call for a special session of legislative hearings that resulted in enacting MICRA in Sep 1975. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Raghunath Reddy, MD is the current president of the San Joaquin Medical Society and practices family medicine at Stockton Primary Care Medical Center
According to Hamm-Frech-Wazzan report published in 2014 and revised in 2019. (In agreeing to prepare the report, this committee insisted on, and were given, total control of methodology, findings, and conclusions, as well as complete control over the editorial content of the report. Findings and conclusions are the products of objective analysis, and do not necessarily reflect the sponsoring organization’s views.) In 1975, the California Legislature enacted, and Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act, commonly known as “MICRA.” The
WINTER 2021
SAN JOAQUIN PHYSICIAN
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