For Rice, ‘preventive medicine’ the key to state’s future

It’s no surprise Matt Rice supports “meaningful” tort reform.

After all, he’s been a physician since 1977 when he graduated from medical school in Pennsylvania, specializing in emergency medicine where things can, and do, sometimes go wrong.

The kicker is that Rice, a Republican running against Patricia Lantz for her seat representing the 26th District in the House of Representatives, subsequently graduated from Seattle University School of Law in 1988.

“I’m a very dedicated person,” Rice said. We live in a society of laws that we don’t always understand.”

He said he believed a law degree, an advanced understanding of the legal process, would enable him as a citizen.

“It seemed like a very important thing to know about,” Rice said.

In fact, Rice does not practice law at all, using his degree only for understanding. He is currently the senior vice president and chief medical officer of Northwest Emergency Physicians, a Federal Way business he helped start that contracts emergency care workers to hospitals around the Northwest.

Rice is also a part-time assistant clinical professor at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He teaches residents how to handle the pressure.

Citing a desire to be “responsive to the future” and more than a little influenced by his time working in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in medical school, Rice is feeling for a pulse in the Washington political scene.

“I believe in trying to prevent problems,” he said.

According to Rice, one of the reasons he decided to run is he wanted to make the kind of difference he does as a practicing physician and professor.

At the top of Rice’s list of issues with problems that need preventing — tort reform.

“Tort reform is an absolute critical issue to this country,” Rice said. “The issue of litigation in our society is a cancer that is eroding it in a number of different ways.”

The most important way, Rice said, is litigation and the fear of being sued keeps people from reaching out to those around them, human to human.

“I’m not opposed to the concept of litigation being important in our society,” Rice said. But he counters that patient safety and access to affordable healthcare is more important.

“If the system is working right and needs are being met, then why is it physicians are leaving the state?” Rice asked. “Because of the suits and outrageous judgements,” as well as what Rice describes as the skyrocketing cost of malpractice insurance.

“We need people who will step up and be creative,” said Rice, who has been critical of Lantz’s handling of tort reform in the Legislature.

Rice’s medical knowledge extends to yet another perspective, as he served in the U.S. Army for 24 years, retiring as a colonel, and was chairman of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Madigan Army Medical Center for 10 years.

However, tort reform is not the only issue Rice feels passionate about. He said he is also disappointed with the current Legislators’ handling of what he calls “the tremendous bureaucratic structure in this state toward businesses.”

“There are serious problems with businesses in this state,” Rice said.

According to Rice, 54 percent of the revenue small businesses generate goes to taxes. Rice alleges the current L&I system is “terribly biased” in favor of the worker seeking compensation.

“There’s little doubt in my mind business owners are also thinking about indirect issues, too,” Rice said, such as the education level of the work force. Rice said 70 percent of workers in the Washington are employed by small business.

“The answer is not building two, three, four bridges,” said Rice, who has lived in Gig Harbor since 1988. “The answer lies in creating a business climate so that people don’t have to cross the bridge every day, so we can have our lifestyle here.”

Rice said he believes in an economic system that’s viable and plans to work with GOP gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi, if both are elected, putting together a group of people to sort through and remove outdated restrictions placed on small businesses in the state.

Rice has worked with numerous organizations since moving to Washington, including the Washington State Governor’s Council on EMS and Trauma Systems. He worked to bring a new hospital to Gig Harbor, which he says will save dozens of lives a year.

He said he hates being labeled, but resigns himself to being known as a “compassionate conservative.”

He is running as the unopposed GOP candidate in the primary and faces Lantz and Libertarian candidate Ted Haley in the Nov. 2 general election.

“I’m the best candidate who’s running,” Rice said. “If people vote based on the facts, I’m the person people will vote for.”

Rice said he doesn’t take victory for granted, and spend mornings at his practice in Federal Way and campaigning all afternoon.

He stresses the importance of healthcare, a strong economy and protecting the quality of education not the dollars spent on it. To Rice, the cure for Washington comes in the form of preventative medicine.

“I don’t want to be solving problems today,” he said, “and still have them be problems in the future.”

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