The residents of Cathedral Residences have felt the impact of the insurance crisis in Florida.
Jim Black, a vice president at Bowditch Insurance, who has been serving as a consultant to The Cathedral Foundation, said nursing home lawsuits all over the state are making it prohibitive for insurance companies to offer policies for that industry. And the problem, he continued, is that because lawyers have exhausted the resources of nursing homes, any organization that provides services to the elderly are coming under the gun.
Black missed the point. He looked to effect rather than cause.
Talmadge and Wylene Parr, who live in the Cathedral Townhouse, looked to cause rather than effect when they said that if all nursing homes and elder care facilities treated their residents the way they are treated at the Cathedral Residences, then Florida wouldn’t be having this problem.
According to several residents, they have been encouraged to write their representatives in Congress and lobby for tort reform. If they want to address the cause of the problem rather than the effect, they should ask their representatives to support Sen. John Breaux’s Elder Justice Act of 2002.
Enactment of this bill would improve the quality of care of old and disabled people in nursing homes. Lawsuits would be the exception rather than the rule and tort reform would no longer be an issue.
Jane Marshall
Clarksville, Tennessee