Opinion ID: 2450246
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Pearce Is A Prisoner For Purposes Of AS 33.30.028.

Text: The State argues a prisoner's responsibility for medical costs under AS 33.30.028 is not discharged upon release from custody. It contends the superior court's interpretation is inconsistent with the statute's legislative purpose of shifting medical costs to prisoners to the fullest extent possible. Pearce responds that the reimbursement language of AS 33.30.028 is clear and unambiguous in using the word prisoner to describe only an individual who is currently incarcerated. The superior court adopted this interpretation in its decision, relying on the definition of prisoner found in AS 33.30.901(12)(A): a person held under authority of state law in official detention as defined in AS 11.81.900(b). [10] Although we follow the legislature's specific definitions of terms where provided, [11] we recognize that statutes frequently identify parties based on a prior status that conferred certain rights and duties. Enforcement of those rights or duties is not necessarily conditioned on retention of that statuswhether a term refers to current or former status depends on the statute's specific context and intent. For example, the Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act provides that if a tenant terminates a rental agreement under specific circumstances, the tenant may subsequently recover pre-termination damages. [12] The party recovering damages no longer is a tenant under the statutory definitiona person entitled under a rental agreement to occupy a dwelling [13] and the term therefore refers to the tenant's status when the right to recovery arose. Similarly, even though an employee under the Alaska Workers' Compensation Act is an employee employed by an employer, [14] workers' compensation benefits are not limited to current employees; for example, the work-related death of an employee precludes further employee status but does not preclude later compensation benefits for the work-related death. [15] Both Pearce and the State draw conclusions from AS 33.30.028's failure to expressly include former prisoners. The State argues that if the legislature intended to relieve former prisoners of liability, the statute would have indicated that medical costs are the responsibility of the prisoner, but only during the period of the prisoner's incarceration. Pearce argues that to impose liability on former prisoners would require explicit inclusion, citing as an example the Missouri Incarceration Reimbursement Act, which provides that the attorney general may seek to secure reimbursement for the expense of the state of Missouri if an offender or former offender has sufficient assets to repay the state. [16] But these arguments simply reinforce the impossibility of assigning a plain meaning to prisoner without reference to AS 33.30.028's legislative history and purpose. [17]
Pearce contends that the legislative history of AS 33.30.028 does not indicate intent to allow the State to seek reimbursement from prisoners after their release from custody. We disagree. The primary goal of AS 33.30.028 is reducing medical costs: the legislation that led to the reimbursement statute's enactment was directed at controlling the costs incurred in correctional institutions, [18] and the sponsor statement indicated the proposed measures would reduce some of the costs of inmate health care and allow [the State] to focus its limited budget on its true mission. [19] Although the legislative history does not explicitly address extending liability to former prisoners, preventing the State from collecting from prisoners to the fullest extent possible would contravene the statute's cost-saving purpose and is not justified by another interest evident from the face of the statute or its legislative history. The superior court's narrow interpretation of prisoner would also lead to anomalous consequences which, in our view, the legislature did not intend. Shielding former prisoners from liability for medical costs, as the State points out, subjects both prisoners and [the State] to a limitations period for reimbursement that is [dependent] upon how much of the prisoner's sentence remains when [the State] provides medical care. That time period bears no reasonable relationship to the statute's purposes. Conditioning the State's right to reimbursement on the timing of medical care would also result in inequitable treatment of prisoners and their specified funding sources, whose liability would vary depending on when the prisoner's medical condition arose or was treated. And prisoners would have incentive to delay seeking medical care until as late as possible in their sentence, hoping that the State would run out of time to seek reimbursement before their release.
Based on the foregoing, and without needing to consider DOC's interpretation to dispel any lingering ambiguity, [20] we interpret prisoner to include former prisoners for the application of AS 33.30.028. We therefore reverse the superior court's ruling that the State is not authorized to seek medical cost reimbursement from Pearce under AS 33.30.028.