california

New Legislation In California Proposed to Increase Medical Malpractice Damage Caps: Why It is Important if you Are Having Wisdom Teeth Extracted

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A recent piece over on DrBicuspid.com titled “Dentists fight Calif. malpractice insurance ballot measure” draws attention to new proposed legislation in California (California Proposition 46) see http://www.drbicuspid.com/index.aspx?sec=log&URL=http%3a%2f%2fwww.drbicuspid.com%2findex.aspx%3fsec%3dsup%26sub%3dbai%26pag%3ddis%26ItemID%3d316366. The article discusses the previous medical malpractice legislation in California called the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) which placed a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damage awards. The act did allow for unlimited economic damages and out of pocket costs. The article then discusses Proposition 46 in California written as “The Troy and Alana Pack Patient Safety Act,” to quadruple MICRA’s cap on noneconomic damages to $1.1 million. This actually simply changes the original $250,000 non-economic damage cap established in 1975 to what it would be today if it was indexed for inflation. I have previously discussed this over at http://www.teethremoval.com/legal_standpoint.html. The article goes on to get commentary from a past California Dental Association … Read more

One in Four Children Living in California Have not been to a Dentist

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I found this new study called “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Dental Care for Publicly Insured Children” to be quite discouraging which recently appeared in the July issue of the journal Health Affairs.  The study says 25% of children in the state of California (U.S.)  have never seen a dentist. It also goes on to address  disparities which exist across type of insurance coverage, ethnicity, and race. This is not good news as lack of dental care can of course cause children to have to miss school for treatment. The study looks at California kids who are age 11 and under and uses data from the 2005 California Health Interview Survey which contains over 10,000 children. So of course this is slightly dated data that was used. Some highlights on the study include African American and Latino American children with … Read more