NY Times series on the impact of shoddy inmate medical care. Yesterday's article was horrifying, exposing how the privatization of inmate medical services puts a premium on providing as little care as possible. One nurse said, "We save money by skipping the ambulance and bringing them right to the morgue." Superfluous Sentiments does pharmaceutical work for inmates and may have some response to the NY Times expose.
Making Crime Hit Home for Offenders is an article that explains the workings and impact of informal youth courts.
And I have contracted the school's Death Virus, three weeks after everyone else gets better, as is my usual immunity routine.
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5 comments:
C Dog: You communists never fail to amaze me. The same thing could be said about bridgemakers, and highway pavers, and any construction that goes on inside of a government owned building. Why can't it be, privatization provides an incentive to do a better job for less money? Government is notoriously inefficient; the private sector should not have a problem competing to provide medical care. Why is it that every time I go to prison, it takes me at least a half hour to get through the medical detector (and at least another half hour to meet my boy)? There's about 80 rude civil service protected union members sitting around doing jack squat. Ol' Mike Eisner would never treat me like that.
Read the article asshole. My argument is not that privatization is always a bad idea. But you would call these stories "a better job for less money?" They let a woman give birth in a toilet and watched her fetus die? They denied a prisoner struggling with Parkinson's all his meds until he died? They watched a woman have a stroke and told her to stop acting?
That's hilarious... anonymous you missed the whole point of the article, but I guess wading through all the pages would have taken longer than to post what you did. Basically I am horrified that the company I work for is actually the company in question here. Well I'm actually one of the two arms of America Service Group: Prison Health Service (physicians/nurses) and Secure Pharmacy Plus (pharmacy). We live in a failed society with so many incompetant people filling such important roles.
I just can't understand comparing healthcare to bridgemakers, highway pavers, and any construction. I didn't realize that the jobs were even the least bit similar.
We are an overnight service, though, and I will argue with the Indiana comment where they have little stock. All they have to do is order it... we send it. I think the SPP side is run pretty efficiently and we provide meds quick. I can't say as much for the PHS side. Sounds like we have problems.
CDog: These are isolated anecdotes and I'm sure that much worse goes on with "public" medical care (though the New York Times would never print such a story). Additionally, the vast majority of the story deals with suicides; it's fairly hard to keep a person from killing himself once he decides to end it. Of course, if we really wanted to make sure no one killed himself in jail, we'd take shoelaces and bedclothes, but then you liberals would whine and say we're being too "hard" on the inmates. And since when wasn't providing healthcare similar to building roads and bridges? The government needs road builders, bridge builders, and doctors to staff prisons. Why can't the free market offer the supply? After all, the free market does just fine outside of the prison walls. Maybe my point was not made as clear as it should've been: The ol' tired line that "privatization puts a premium on providing as little care as possible" can just as easily be said for building bridges, yet the bridges remain standing when constructed by private companies. In fact, having private companies compete to provide bridges that are safer, more reliable and dependable is something that would be conspicuosly lacking if the government had a monopoly on bridgebuilding (i.e., just like customer service at the DMV is nonexistent).
Womanofthelaw replies:
Ah yes. Customer service. That exists. Sooooo many places. WHERE?!?!
And that private company in Boston did a great job with the Big Dig. Ah yes. Thank God for the free market! Life could not go on without it!
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