You might think it would be easy to get a good idea through the S.C. Legislature.

Think again.

Getting a new law passed takes an expert.

And experts cost money.

That is why Columbia’s Helen Haskell paid $20,000 to two savvy lobbyists this year. Their specialty: brokering compromises and breaking logjams.

It worked. After three years of trying, Haskell has herself — and the public — a law that may save lives.

Called the Lewis Blackman Hospital Patient Safety Act, it requires doctors in hospitals to wear identification tags that disclose whether they are inexperienced doctors called “residents” or seasoned veterans. It also requires hospitals to allow patients to contact medical veterans if there is an emergency.

The lobbyists made the difference, Haskell said.

“They were magicians. I could not have bird-dogged it the way they did, with their networks. They had the time and the expertise.”

Haskell had had the help of her local lawmaker, Rep. James Smith, a minority Democrat. Although Smith spent hours helping her, the bill hadn’t even made it out of committee after two years.

“I gave up at that point,” Haskell said.

In January, Haskell hired professional lobbyists Jack West and Ron Fulmer for $20,000. They gave her a discount — corporate clients can pay $50,000 or more for a lobbyist’s services for one year.

“She tugs at your heart,” said West. “We’re softies, deep down.”

Haskell’s son, Lewis Blackman, 16, died in 2000 from negligence at the Medical University of South Carolina.

As Lewis bled internally over a 30-hour period, residents missed repeated clear signs of his impending demise. Haskell, not knowing the doctors were residents, believed they knew what they were talking about when they dismissed her son’s complaints of pain. After Lewis died, the hospital’s insurer paid more than $900,000 to settle the case without a trial.

After receiving the settlement, Haskell got Smith to introduce her bill to require ID badges for all doctors, including residents. Almost immediately, hospital groups objected.

In 2003 and 2004, Smith and Haskell met repeatedly with representatives of the S.C. Hospital Association and the Medical University of South Carolina, each of which has its own full-time lobbyist. Smith drew up dozens of different versions of the bill in an effort to reach a compromise with the medical lobby.

But the bill stayed in limbo until this year, when Haskell used some of the settlement money to hire West and Fulmer.

Both had extensive experience.

West is the son of the late Gov. John West, a Democrat. Fulmer is a former Republican state representative from Charleston. The pair, who are at the State House almost daily during the legislative session, were able to intervene quickly if the bill stalled.

The lobbyists did their homework. By March 31, when Haskell’s bill was introduced in the House, they had secured nearly every major Republican committee chairman as a co-sponsor of the bill. (Republicans control both the S.C. House and Senate.)

By April 27, the bill was in the Senate. There, Fulmer and West landed the support of top Republicans.

The lobbyists told Haskell’s story to Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greenville, a senior Republican on a committee that deals with medical affairs and an old friend of the West family. Moved, Smith agreed to become Senate sponsor of the bill.

The lobbyists also won the support of Sen. Harvey Peeler, R-Cherokee, chairman of the Medical Affairs Committee.

With Peeler’s and Smith’s support, the lobbyists got the bill to the Senate floor.

There, however, the bill was ambushed. Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, wanted an amendment saying evidence that a resident didn’t wear proper identification could be used in a medical malpractice lawsuit. The medical lobby would have opposed that amendment, dooming the bill.

West persuaded Hutto to drop the amendment request.

On May 27, the bill cleared the Senate.

On June 1, it went to Gov. Mark Sanford.

On June 8, Sanford let the bill become law without his signature. The governor said he thought it was over-regulation and would drive up medical costs. But he said he would let it pass because it may reduce medical errors and because of the “hard work and degree of compromise that has gone into crafting this bill.”

Said Haskell: “This wasn’t about regulation. This was about disclosure.”

And, she might have added, the importance of lobbyists.