Opinion ID: 2450246
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Extending liability for medical costs to former prisoners is consistent with AS 33.30.028's legislative history and purpose.

Text: 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.