Medical Board

A shameless act of pandering to a well-heeled special interest by members of a state Assembly committee on Tuesday will end up protecting sex abusing, drug addicted and criminally convicted doctors.

Democrats in Sacramento are basking in a national spotlight as reporters and pundits pick apart high-profile votes on transportation, cap and trade and immigration and speculate if, and how, they will turn a legislative supermajority into concrete action to resist Trump administration policies. Yet the industries that traditionally rule the roost in the statehouse are not sitting this session out.

The Medical Board of California should soon have to answer for its failure to properly investigate accusations that a doctor's negligence harmed or killed a patient.

It would be unthinkable to decide the merits of a rape case without collecting evidence and interviewing both the victim and the accused. It is equally inconceivable that the Medical Board would close a complaint involving potentially life-threatening negligence after a medical expert gets only the doctor’s side of the story. Yet that appears to be the outcome of too many patient complaints to the Board.