Patient Safety
ABOVE: Patient advocates working to reform medical malpractice laws meet with Sen. Feinstein's staff.
Medical negligence is a silent epidemic that claims hundreds of thousands of Americans’ lives annually. Consumer Watchdog fights for greater doctor discipline and physician accountability through the regulatory and legal system. We work with patients injured by medical malpractice and their families to tell their stories, improve patient safety and create legal deterrence to medical negligence.
Consumer Watchdog has long opposed and sought to rollback California’s “one size fits all” cap on what injured patients can recover from juries and to stop the spread of this cruel cap on courts across the nation. The medical insurance complex defeated a California ballot initiative in 2014, Prop 46, that would have lifted the cap and instituted drug testing of doctors. A third provision of the ballot measure, the requirement that doctors check an existing database of prescriptions before prescribing narcotics for the first time, was signed into law by Governor Brown in 2016 and in effect.
Read Stories Of Injured Patients Denied Justice In California
Medical Negligence Reports & Resources
How Insurance Reform Lowered Doctor's Medical Malpractice Rates In California: And How Malpractice Caps Failed
In this groundbreaking report, Consumer Watchdog shows the success of insurance regulation and dispels the myth that California's malpractice cap -- the model for so many proposals around the country -- is responsible for reducing insurance premiums in the state.
Medical Malpractice Premiums Graph
This graph (published in the Sacramento Bee) compares what happened to malpractice insurance premiums after "MICRA," California's damage cap law, passed in 1975 and after the passage of insurance reform Proposition 103 in 1988. Hint: The result wasn’t what proponents of MICRA promised.
Rate Savings Chart
Rate challenges brought by Consumer Watchdog under insurance reform Proposition 103's public participation process have saved doctors in California $77 million. View the chart detailing each unjustified malpractice insurance rate increase.
Medical Malpractice Resource Page
SANTA MONICA, CA: The California Supreme Court said today it will review the constitutionality of the state’s arbitrary 39-year-old damages cap of $250,000 in medical malpractice cases in Hughes v. Pham. Last week, Consumer Watchdog wrote an amicus letter asking the Court to review Hughes and overturn this decades-old injustice.
SANTA MONICA, CA: Consumer Watchdog has joined the plaintiffs in Hughes v. Pham in asking that the California Supreme Court review the constitutionality of the state’s arbitrary 39-year-old damages cap of $250,000 in medical malpractice cases.
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – Today Senator Barbara Boxer stood with mothers who lost their children to medical negligence in calling on California voters to support for the patient safety protections in Proposition 46. The campaign supporting Prop 46 also released an ad featuring Barbara Boxer.
Consumer Watchdog Campaign: Fla. Supreme Court Rules Medical Malpractice Damage Cap Unconstitutional
Santa Monica, CA – Californians should have the same right as Floridians to equal protection under the law in cases of medical negligence, said Consumer Watchdog Campaign today after the Florida Supreme Court ruled the state’s cap on medical negligence damages is unconstitutional. Signatures will be turned in beginning next week for a ballot measure that would increase protections for harmed California patients by
