Those admitted to hospitals tend to put their full trust in the medical professionals caring for them. Whether it is a doctor, nurse, or surgery assistant, patients can do little else than trust what the professional recommends for their health.
Despite being given such absolute trust, medical malpractice has skyrocketed in the past decade among American medical professionals. Prescription drug use, alcohol, and negligence have been responsible for between 210,000 and 400,000 deaths each year.
In 2014 Bob Pack introduced the Pack Patient Safety Act, or Proposition 46, to the world, after losing both of his children to a driver impaired by drugs prescribed by multiple doctors within the same hospital. This is the kind of negligence that Proposition 46 aims to eradicate from our health care system.
Not only will doctors be required to check an existing database to determine whether their patients are “pill shopping,” Prop 46 will require hospitals to randomly drug test their doctors in the same manner that airline pilots are required drug testing. Too many patients have fallen victim to a doctor under the influence of alcohol or drugs.
When medical professionals are caught in the midst of malpractice, the victims are not fairly compensated. While the death toll as the result of medical malpractice continues to rise, the compensation amount for the victims has remained the same since 1975. Prop 46 attempts to adjust the cap of $250,000 to $1,000,000 for the damages assessed in medical malpractice lawsuits. Hundreds of thousands of individuals agree that it is time to account for nearly forty years of inflation.
If you stand behind patient safety, we urge you to vote YES on Prop 46 on November 2!
