Florida: State House District 36

Candidates

Patrick Howell, Republican
Sheri McInvale, Democrat

Issues: Nursing Home Quality | Long Term Care | Utility Regulation |

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Question

Florida law provides the right to sue and recover damages when a long-term care facility provides negligent care that results in injury or death to a resident. What is your position on limiting non-economic compensatory damage awards against facilities whose negligent care results in a resident’s injury or death?

AARP Response

AARP believes that the right to sue a long-term care facility when negligent care results in a resident’s injury or death is essential to our efforts to ensure the quality of long-term care. Arbitrary limits on the damages awarded in lawsuits devalue the worth of older people and seriously impede or eliminate this right.

The staff report of the Task Force on the Availability and Affordability of Long-term Care found no frivolous lawsuits filed against long-term care facilities. Lawsuits are filed when residents suffer serious injuries and conditions such as bedsores, malnutrition, dehydration and broken bones.

The single-most important factor in preventing these problems is the presence of adequate numbers of well-trained staff. Florida law now provides for minimum staffing levels and the legislature appropriated the funds to achieve these levels.

Senate Bill 1202, passed by the 2001 legislature, created a carefully developed balance between regulation, quality, litigation reform, and funding. This important legislation will, when fully implemented, reduce the number of lawsuits, improve the quality of care and protect the rights of residents to seek redress in the courts when they are harmed.

AARP will oppose any change in the law that would alter the balance created in Senate Bill 1202 because any such change would be harmful to residents.

Issue	Yes	No	Unclear
Opposes any limits on compensatory damages for nursing home residents.
Supports protecting the right of residents to sue nursing home and assisted living facilities.
Opposes any changes to the law created by Senate Bill 1202 (Florida law 2001-45)

Candidate Response: Patrick Howell

I believe that an aggrieved party, or their surviving family should always have the ability to go to court to recover damages against the party that negligently or intentionally inflicted harm upon a nursing home resident. Nursing home facilities are trusted with the care of some of our most vulnerable citizens and they must be held to an elevated standard of care. Being held accountable through our court systems is one of the ways to assure that nursing home facilities provide better service. However, it is clear that there is a correlation between rising healthcare and long-term care costs, and rising jury awards. With these awards, it is the trial attorney that benefits the most. Therefore, I believe that any such legislation must also be accompanied by legislation that addresses resident safety through mandatory staffing requirements and facility specifications.

Candidate Response: Sheri McInvale

First allow me to explain my bias when answering these questions. I work for the social service agency, SENIORS FIRST, Inc. in Orange County. I have been advocating for the protection of our older adults for some time. In response to Nursing Home Quality, I fully support the rights of residents and their families to sue nursing homes and assisted living facilities whose negligence or improper care causes permanent injury or death to one of our precious elderly citizens. I also opposed proposed limits of $250,000.00 on non-economic compensatory damage awards. I believe a more reasonable limit would be $1,000,000 seeing how some tort reform is probably inevitable in the near future. I oppose limits on economic damage awards.

Question

Many people cannot find affordable, quality home and community-based long-term care and face long waiting lists when they need help with the cost of their care. How would you improve the availability, affordability and quality of long-term care, particularly home and community-based care?

AARP Response

Long-term care services can be costly. Many people cannot afford to pay for them. Public funding for long-term care is limited and waiting lists for services are long. Many people do not have family or friends to help them and few have private long-term care insurance.

In addition, the current long-term care system is fragmented and confusing to those who need to use it. Public funding is used predominantly for nursing home care. The amount and quality of services is inadequate. Information about the availability and quality of services is not readily available to consumers.

Because of these problems many older people do not receive the long-term care services they need. They live in fear of impoverishing themselves and becoming a burden to their families. Their health and the quality of their lives decline unnecessarily.

Florida must have a comprehensive, cohesive system to meet the long-term care needs of all Floridians regardless of age and income. Creating such a system must be a legislative priority.

The system should:

• Be adequately funded,
  
  
• Emphasize home and community-based care,
  
  
• Focus on the needs of consumers,
  
  
• Provide for consumers to direct their own care,
  
  
• Support the role of families in providing care,
  
  
• Be easily accessible.
  
  
• Coordinate with private insurance coverage,
  
  
• Focus on the quality of care and the quality of life,
  
  
• Improve the coordination between health and long-term care services,and
  
  
• Be efficiently administered.
  
  

Issue	Yes	No	Unclear
Supports funding to eliminate current and future waiting lists for people who need financial assistance.
Proposes ways to meet the long-term care needs of all Floridians, not just those who need financial assistance.
Supports the development of a long-term care system focused on the needs of consumers not providers.

Candidate Response: Patrick Howell

It is very difficult to operate an assisted living facility or nursing home in Florida. What should be a flourishing service in our state is actually floundering. I believe that our crisis in the area of long-term care is caused in part by liability concerns and the fear of lawsuits. Therefore, I believe that addressing exorbitant jury awards will go a long way towards alleviating the problem and making it advantageous to open and expand such facilities.

Candidate Response: Sheri McInvale

Once again through my work with SENIORS FIRST and the Orange County Office on Aging, I am aware of the huge demand to find and afford quality home and community based care. I fully support increased funding to try and eliminate waiting lists for services for our frail older adults. I believe we can continue to work with the Department of Elder Affairs and agencies like AARP to help counties become elder friendly. We need to focus our resources on taking care of our housing and transportation needs for our seniors. A viable system for addressing these needs should be a priority in our State and our communities.

Question

In recent years the Florida legislature has considered a number of proposals that would alter the regulation of public utilities and benefit service providers at the expense of service consumers. How would you protect Florida consumers from unnecessary increases in their electric and basic phone bills?

AARP Response

The 2002 legislature passed legislation that would have increased consumer’s basic phone rates by as much as $8 per month. This legislation was vetoed by the Governor at the urging on AARP and other consumer groups.

Supporters of this legislation claimed it would stimulate competition in the local phone services and ultimately benefit consumers. The claim was based on the faulty idea that local phone rates are being subsidized by other services offered by local phone service companies. The bill was supposed to correct this subsidy problem.

AARP disputes that local service is subsidized and offers evidence to prove the point. (see AARP publication -- Current Issues in the Pricing of Telecommunications Services). AARP further challenged supposed consumer protections that were added to the bill. There was no consumer protection in the bill that would have offset the massive phone rate increases it would have led to.

Electricity: In the hope of encouraging lower prices, higher service quality and greater innovation, lawmakers across the country are considering whether and how to restructure the electric industry to allow consumers to purchase electricity from competing suppliers rather than from the traditional regulated monopoly structure. The Governor’s 2020 Energy Commission is considering restructuring in Florida.

The extent to which implementation of retail competition benefits residential consumers is unclear. Benefits in the form of lower rates are not guaranteed to residential ratepayers, who are at a disadvantage since they do not purchase enough electricity to be as attractive to competitors as industrial customers. If the outcome of restructuring is left entirely to the marketplace, residential consumers are likely to be the last class of customers to benefit if they receive any benefits at all.

If the electric industry in Florida is restructured, safeguards should be adopted that ensure just, reasonable and affordable rates and high-quality service for residential customers under retail competition. The legislature should ensure that residential ratepayers receive equitable and simultaneous benefits, including rate reductions, equal access and better service, from retail competition.

Issue	Yes	No	Unclear
Supports electric deregulation that specifically benefits the consumer.
Opposes an increase in basic consumer phone rates.

Candidate Response: Patrick Howell

More competition in this area will bring down utility rates. Monopolies must be broken up, and phone companies should be competing for the right to provide local service to the residents of any given community. However, in the provision of electrical utilities, we must be very careful to assure that what has happened in California will not be repeated here. Therefore, we must take a very cautious approach when dealing with the provision of necessary utilities like electricity, oil and gas.

Candidate Response: Sheri McInvale

I do not support the deregulation of utility industry. One only has to look at what happened in California after deregulation. I am pro consumer and certainly have concerns about the lasting effects of our economy and the financial increases for certain necessary services. The mission of SENIORS FIRST, Inc. in Orange County is to enhance the quality of life of our older adults and help them to remain independent and living in their own homes for as long as possible. This is so critical for healthy communities. In that vain, I refer to the previous answer and say that we must increase funding for these types of programs that have as their mission to assist seniors in need.