FINES SHOULD HELP FINANCE TRAUMA CARE.

Byline: Richard Alarcon Local View

IT is the most profound pain any parent can endure. The vivid memory will never leave me.

She was only 7 years old, and yet my daughter Andrea was trying to ease her little brother's agony by singing his favorite song:

Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high.

There's a land that I heard of once in a lullaby.

(I held my 3 year-old-son Richie in my arms and felt him slip away slowly, softly.)

Someday I'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds are far behind me.

Richie's struggle ended that day, but mine had just begun. A suicidal driver had slammed into his grandmother's car, fatally injuring them both.

It was one of my most desperate hours. But I have worked to turn that desperation and pain into the motivation to help others. For several years, I served on the board of directors of Los Angeles Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and I also established a foundation in Richie's name. But now I turn my efforts to legislative relief.

Richie died on May 1, 1987. Since there was no trauma center in the San Fernando Valley, he had to be transported to the children's hospital in Hollywood by helicopter. I like to believe that nothing more could have been done to save my son. Yet the absence of a trauma center closer to the accident site leaves me with some doubt.

In the years since Richie's death, the options for California's trauma victims have become desperately few - and not only in the Valley. Seventy emergency facilities have closed in California since 1990. Nine of those closed hospitals with emergency rooms were in Los Angeles alone, and that doesn't count the closure of the Level 1 trauma center at Martin Luther King Jr./Drew Medical Center.

Now patients needing emergency treatment are being rerouted to hospitals farther away because the nearby emergency rooms have often reached bed capacity. It is a well-established fact that a trauma patient's survival chances increase if he receives quality care in the first ``golden hour'' after the trauma. However, innumerable and potentially life-saving moments are being wasted in L.A.'s gridlocked traffic.

``I am not an alarmist, but in trauma cases where every second counts, that scenario means that patients will die unnecessarily,'' William Brien, a doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles said recently in testimony to the Subcommittee on Health of the House Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. Congress. He added that the crisis is creating a domino effect that ``would inevitably lead to a complete collapse of our area's trauma system as fewer remaining hospitals are left to handle an increased number of emergency cases.''

Recent reports show that our emergency rooms and trauma centers are short by hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

In the state Legislature, we are working to increase California's investment in the health-care system, reduce the costs of pharmaceuticals, increase the amount of physician reimbursement rates and increase the number of patients with insurance, but still the costs continue to rise.

Instead of helping, the federal government is turning a blind eye to our problem. The Bush administration is cutting funding for the hospitals that treat the most people without health insurance.

While there are varying opinions about the causes and solutions to the health-care crisis, it is clear that any comprehensive solution to affordable health care is a long way off and that emergency facilities can't wait for a fix.

That's why I am proposing Senate Bill 57, being called the ``Golden Hour bill.'' It will allow counties to increase the current penalties for traffic and criminal violations to pay for trauma and emergency rooms.

Car accidents are among the top-10 causes of trauma injuries. An increase of just $20 to $40 on the average $320 ticket for a serious - often accident-causing - offense would raise about $100 million every year. While this won't solve the entire crisis, it will provide desperately needed first-aid to stop the fiscal bleeding.

This legislation would help save lives and promote safer driving without hurting taxpayers or the poor. It won't cost the average taxpayer a cent, and to ensure that these added penalties don't disproportionately hurt the poor, there are already safeguards that allow judges to soften the costs for those who can't pay and can prove economic hardships. Dissuading reckless behavior is a fair way to ease the funding crisis plaguing trauma centers.

Our kids must have proper emergency care. That's why I've also added a stipulation that 15 percent of the money collected from my legislation would go to fund pediatric-specific trauma care units.

We must take action to save money-starved emergency facilities while the bigger debate rages on about how to pay for the rising cost of health care in general.

Together, we can make the words in Richie's favorite song ring true: ``Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.''