Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA)

The Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA) was signed into law in 1975, in an effort to limit non-economic damages in medical malpractice cases.  RCRC has long supported the protection of the MICRA cap.  The cap on non-economic protects practitioners from exorbitant malpractice insurance rates.  Prior to the creation of that cap, California was losing providers, especially specialty services.  In rural and other medically underserved areas, changing the MICRA cap would increase costs associated with medical malpractice insurance, and threaten access to healthcare.  Increasing costs to providers, especially those in rural areas, could force them to reduce services or eliminate them altogether.  A change in MICRA could be devastating to rural communities where the provider pool is already limited.