April 18, 2003

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TALLAHASSEE, Fla., April 18, 2003 A national senior citizen's advocacy group is conducting a four-city tour of Florida next week to spotlight how the medical liability crisis is hurting the state's elder residents, and to call on lawmakers to fix the broken system.

The Seniors Coalition, which has 200,000 supporters in Florida and four million across the country, will hold meetings with seniors in Tallahassee, Tampa and Miami. The coalition will end its swing through the state Thursday with a major rally for seniors in Orlando featuring Miss Florida 2002 Carrie Mewha, who supports medical liability reform.

"The Seniors Coalition views the current healthcare liability insurance crisis as one of the most important issues facing older Americans today," said Bob Michel of Brevard County, the coalition's Southeast Coordinator. "The skyrocketing cost of liability insurance over just the last few years is making it more difficult for many Americans, especially seniors, to find medical care."

Because of the complexities of the aging process and the multiple chronic illnesses that plague many older patients, healthcare providers are increasingly wary of accepting senior patients for fear that any complications might translate into a hefty lawsuit, Michel said. The result: seniors face a serious erosion of healthcare services.

The four-city Florida tour is designed to raise awareness about the crisis among seniors and to encourage them to ask their lawmakers to solve the crisis.

At the meetings, seniors will be able to sign petitions and postcards calling on the Florida Legislature to act prior to the scheduled May 2 end of the session. The petitions and postcards will be hand-delivered to legislative leaders in Tallahassee at the tour's end.

The Seniors Coalition supports the recommendations issued by Governor Jeb Bush's select task force of university leaders who studied the medical liability crisis. The task force made 60 recommendations to enhance patient safety, strengthen physician discipline, stabilize the insurance market, and create more balance in the legal system, including a cap of $250,000 on non-economic damages awarded in medical liability cases.

"Doctors and lawyers have a right to receive reasonable compensation for their services," Michel said. "However, when compensation is open-ended, as in the case of unregulated non-economic and punitive damage claims, it potentially places a very big 'carrot at the end of the stick,' one that can cause a fervor of lawsuits."

At the Florida meetings, the Seniors Coalition will also circulate petitions calling on the U.S. Congress to enact laws to end the medical liability crisis on the national level.

The schedule for the Seniors Coalition's Florida tour is as follows:

Monday, April 21
10:15 a.m. - Georgia Belle Dickenson independent living center, 301 East Carolina Street, Tallahassee

Tuesday, April 22 10 a.m. - Barksdale Senior Center, 1801 North Lincoln Street, Tampa

11:15 a.m. - University Village independent living center, 12401 North 22nd Street, Tampa

1 p.m. - Rock Creek Village independent living center, 8606 Boulder Court, Tampa

Wednesday, April 23
11 a.m. - Robert Sharpe Towers independent living center, 103 Northwest 202 Terrace, Miami

Thursday, April 24
11 a.m. - Senior citizen's rally, Florida Hospital Adventist Church, 2800 North Orange Avenue, Orlando (featuring Miss Florida 2002, Carrie Mewha.)

The Seniors Coalition is a non-profit, non-partisan education and issue advocacy organization that represents the issues of American seniors at the federal, state and local levels. The coalition neither solicits nor accepts federal funding. For more information on the coalition, please visit its web site at www.senior.org

Contact:

Bob Michel, The Seniors Coalition: (321) 779-0711

Rich Rasmussen, Florida Hospital Association: (850)222-9800

Brian Warecki, Hill and Knowlton: (813) 221-0030