Taxpayer Costs Climbing To Keep Inmates Healthy

Taxpayer Costs Climbing To Keep Inmates Healthy

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio prisoners are getting state-of-the-art medical care and you are paying for it.

At a time when many families are struggling to pay for their own health care, one group in Ohio gets universal coverage, costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars, 10TV's Kurt Ludlow reported.

Inmate Michael Adams was being seen by one of the top cardiologists in Columbus, at the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction's Corrections Medical Center.

...

"We spent about $198 million last year," said Annette Chambers-Smith, director of medical services with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. "We are constitutionally required in the United States of America to provide healthcare to inmates."

http://www.10tv.com/live/content/local/stories/2010/05/04/story-columbus-ohio-prison-inmate-medical-care.html?sid=102

That costs money, even if we don't see "those people" in our neighborhoods. We really should explore more creative solutions to crime than just tossing malefactors in the clink.

Matter of fact, I believe at one time, we imprisoned as much as India and China combined.

They had a special on PBS about that the other night...it was pretty informative.

;)

I thought it was more than anyone else. And I just can't help thinking "to what purpose"? Our friends in the so-called right to life movement could do a great service dedicating their time and energy to changing the way we respond to crime; that could really improve the quality of life for a lot of people, including fetuses.

I don't know what the answer is, or if there's even any one answer. Part of me suspects that our consumerist, mechanized culture is at least partly to blame. Young people, young men espcially, have a lot of excess energy that used to be channeled into labor-intensive activities like farming. Would that energy be better spent in that sort of activity for a set period of time (two years?) with a subsequent guarantee of paid-for post-high school education or job training?

As it is, we do a piss-poor job in our society of preparing young people for joining the work force, and I think it would benefit the country to have a better trained, better educated 18- to 24-year-old demographic. We certainly seem to have a number of people in that age group suited more for incarceration than contribution.