Little-Known Health Act Fact: Prison Inmates Are Signing Up - NYTimes.com - 0 views
-
“For those newly covered, it will open up treatment doors for them” and potentially save money in the long run by reducing recidivism, said Dr. Fred Osher, director of health systems and services policy for the Council of State Governments Justice Center. He added that a 2009 study in Washington State found that low-income adults who received treatment for addiction had significantly fewer arrests than those who were untreated.
-
Opponents of the Affordable Care Act say that expanding Medicaid has further burdened an already overburdened program, and that allowing enrollment of inmates only worsens the problem. They also contend that while shifting inmate health care costs to the federal government may help states’ budgets, it will deepen the federal deficit. And they assert that allowing newly released inmates to receive Medicaid could present new public relations problems for the Affordable Care Act.
-
In the past, states and counties have paid for almost all the health care services provided to jail and prison inmates, who are guaranteed such care under the Eighth Amendment. According to a report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, 44 states spent $6.5 billion on prison health care in 2008. In Ohio, health care for prisoners cost $225 million in 2010 and accounted for 20 percent of the state’s corrections budget. Extended hospital stays — treatment for cancer or heart attacks or lengthy psychiatric hospitalizations, for example — are particularly expensive.
- ...3 more annotations...
-
More money could be saved over the long term, she added, if connecting newly released inmates to services helps to keep them out of jail and reduces visits to emergency rooms, the most expensive form of care.“The ability for us to be able to call up a treatment provider and say, ‘We have this person we want to refer to you and guess what, you can actually get payment now,’ changes the lives of these people,
-
as important, he said, was the chance to coordinate care for prisoners after their release.About 70 percent of prison inmates in the state have problems with addiction, he said, and 34 percent suffer from mental illness. Without health coverage, inmates leave prison with 30 days’ worth of medication and are then mostly left to their own devices.“If they go off their medication, oftentimes it can once again lead to more criminal activity,” Mr. Raemisch said. “So by keeping them medicated and keeping them mentally healthy, it really helps us in our re-entry efforts.”
-
As essential as health insurance is for people trying to put together their lives after being incarcerated, the challenge of getting them into treatment, when they often did not have housing or jobs, was “a whole other kettle of fish,”