This week I had the opportunity to present testimony to the Senate Business, Profession and Economic Development Committee regarding Senate Bill 1111 (Negrete McLeod). Please find below a transcript of my testimony.  I would urge any California Voters to contact their state Senators and oppose this bill as currently written.

I currently specialize in training and consulting for addiction, pain management and coexisting personality and mental health problems and am the Director of Training for the Gorski-CENAPS ® Corporation.  I have earned a Bachelor Degree in Behavioral Science, a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology and a Doctorate in Addictive Disorders. 

I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, (LMFT) a California Certified Alcohol and Drug Counselor (CADC-II), and an Advanced Relapse Prevention Specialist (ACRPS).  I have also been on the faculty of UC Santa Cruz Extension Alcohol and Drug Studies Program, as well as teaching at Santa Clara University, UC Berkeley Extension and Stanford University Medical School.

I have worked in the addiction and mental health field for over twenty-five years serving people with addiction and coexisting disorders.  Many of my clients have been doctors and nurses in supervised diversion programs and can I unequivocally attest to the benefit of treatment and close monitoring of these professionals.  Given the reality of an under-manned and overwhelmed health care system, it’s imperative that we support these health care providers returning to their field so they can once again contribute their communities. 

I am concerned about several components of SB 111—also known as the Consumer Protection Health Protection Act—which I believe contains deceptive language that has the potential to criminalize over 500,000 California Licensed Health Care Professionals for the benefit of one special interest group—The Center for Public Interest Law (CPIL).  Under the proposed law, any Licensee who is the subject of a consumer complaint, legitimate or manufactured, would be routinely ruined by the provisions of this law as written.

This bill stacks the deck against Health Care Licensees to the extreme.  The justifying concept of patient protection has been morphed into a backward and punitive approach that will prevent the possibility of any meaningful reform or progress.  The cornerstone, and the major problem of this bill, is the removal of due process and equal protection for all licensees. 

I understand the importance developing genuinely needed patient safety reform, but reform should not lead to unfettered denial of equal protection and due process for affected licensees.  One example of how SB 1111 would legislate is giving extraordinary judicial powers to the Executive Officer (EO) of the Department of Consumer (DCA) Affairs.  Under this law the EO would be empowered to immediately suspend the license of anyone under investigation—not convicted mind you, but just under investigation.  It is of great concern to me that the EO of the DCA, with no background in healthcare or related expertise, would have this kind of power which could easily succumb to the CPIL lynch mob pressure through their questionable political and lobbying efforts.

To learn about the my views on quality chronic pain management please go to my article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.

To see an online overview of Cognit delivering Addiction-Free Pain Management® please go to this Link for a free demo.

To learn about my upcoming trainings you can check out our Calendar page.