Legislators are being told that approval of a 2004 ballot question and action by state lawmakers two years before that are stabilizing medical malpractice insurance rates in Nevada.

Question 3 passed last fall. It puts a cap of $350,000 on pain and suffering awards in medical malpractice lawsuits.

Cliff King is the chief insurance assistant for the Nevada Division of Insurance. He says requests for rate increases have become fewer and smaller in the past couple of years.

In 2002, state lawmakers approved the $350,000 cap on damages, but with exceptions.

Doctors who thought legislators didn't go far enough then worked to put Question 3 on the ballot to remove the exceptions.

But Bill Bradley of the Nevada Trial Lawyers Association says ballot questions like the one passed last fall have had, "catastrophic impacts on victims' rights."