Editorial: Defeat of malpractice bill unfair to voters

Saturday, June 7, 2003 | 3:37 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION: June 8, 2003

The voters were dealt a blow toward the end of the Legislature's regular session when Senate Bill 97 was defeated. The bill, as amended in the Assembly, would have allowed two medical-malpractice questions on the November 2004 ballot.

Last fall doctors secured more than 90,000 signatures on an initiative petition, which forced the Legislature to consider a bill changing the state's medical malpractice law that was passed during a special legislative session in 2002. The doctors argued that changing the law to reduce attorney fees and pain and suffering awards would lower their medical malpractice premiums. And lower premiums, they argued, would motivate doctors to stay in Nevada, thus ensuring continuity of medical service.

Initiative petitions that seek to change state law first go to the Legislature. If not approved there, they go to the voters. The doctors' initiative petition became Senate Bill 97. But much to the doctors' chagrin, SB97 was amended in the Assembly to require that it go before the voters along with a companion question. The second question would have asked voters if they preferred modifying the existing law in the opposite way -- to allow a higher cap on pain and suffering awards in certain cases and to allow the Board of Medical Examiners to more closely scrutinize doctors who have multiple medical malpractice cases against them.

The doctors then lobbied heavily against SB97 and the Senate killed it with a 12-9 vote. Also killed, because now only the doctors' original petition will be on the ballot, was any real choice for voters.