Calif. ob.gyns. embrace MICRA.(News)

The $250,000 cap on "pain and suffering" damage awards in California malpractice suits has not been raised in 30 years. And that's just fine with many physicians in the state.

"It's a tremendous benefit for us, but it's still not enough," said Dr. Peter Weiss, a Beverly Hills ob.gyn. who has been in practice for 19 years. "Malpractice is still a major concern."

Dr. Weiss was referring to the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 (MICRA), which caps noneconomic damages at $250,000.

Another MICRA fan is Dr. Philip Diamond, a San Diego ob.gyn. who is active in Californians Allied for Patient Protection (CAPP), a grassroots organization that supports the current law. "MICRA makes people whole," he said. "It provides for full economic damages--lost earnings, medical care, rehabilitation costs. Everything's covered. The only thing it doesn't do is allow people to become multi-millionaires because of pain and suffering."

But attorneys and patients say the cap is too low. One state senator, Tom Torlakson (D-Antioch), is planning to introduce legislation next year that would raise the cap to $900,000, and a consumer group is considering putting a referendum on the ballot to eliminate the cap altogether.

Robert Oakes, a spokesman for Sen. Torlakson, said the senator's bill was spurred in part by the experience of constituents who tried to hire a lawyer to represent them after their 7-year-old daughter's death, allegedly as a result of medical malpractice. They say they were repeatedly turned down by lawyers who said the case was not worth taking because of the cap.

The couple's difficulty in finding an attorney doesn't surprise James C. Sturdevant, president of Consumer Attorneys of California, a Sacramento-based group that favors increasing the cap. "If you're going to hire competent doctors [as expert witnesses] who come from the University of California, San Francisco, or Stanford Medical School, you're going to pay a high hourly rate for the work they do," he said. "Some of them are just looking at few pages of medical records, but what if you are doing an elaborate investigation as to the cause and effect of the negligence, and having to take depositions at the experts' hourly rate, and hiring statisticians and experts? The cost can easily be somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000."