AP via SacBee ^ | 10/6/8 | DON THOMPSON - Associated Press Writer
Posted on Monday, October 06, 2008 3:47:28 PM by SmithL
SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge scolded California officials on Monday for failing to provide the billions of dollars a court-appointed receiver says is needed to upgrade the state's prison health care system.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson made it clear he expects California to pay $8 billion for seven new inmate medical facilities. But he stopped short of immediately holding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Controller John Chiang in contempt for failing to turn over the money.
The judge says he is likely to order the state to pay $250 million as a first installment to demonstrate good faith.
J. Clark Kelso, the court-appointed receiver, said he needs that amount to start designing three new medical and mental health units. Kelso said he will need more than $3 billion before July 1 to begin building them. The rest of the $8 billion would come in later years.
"He needs the money to run it and improve it," Henderson said as he repeatedly dismissed objections from the state's deputy attorney general.
He noted a sense of urgency to reform California's delivery of inmate medical care and said the price tag to fix it should not be an obstacle.
"Defendants' argument would seem to allow federal constitutional rights to be trampled any time a state decides it would cost too much money," he said at the opening of the hearing.
Medical care in California's prisons is so bad it has been ruled unconstitutional. Henderson appointed a receiver to run the prison medical system after finding that an average of an inmate a week was dying from neglect or malpractice.
My note: This prison health care system is in federal receivership. That means a federal judge runs it and his receiver tells him how much money he needs. The rest of the prison system is about to be taken over. Cities are not doing much better. The City of Vallejo has declared bankruptcy. San Francisco is in trouble with layoffs looming. The City of Oakland is in similar straits as well. The Governor will cough up the money or suffer the consequences and cities and counties need to examine their pension and medical plans as they cannot afford them. TC
1 comment:
I think if prisoner's want medical attention they should get jobs and start paying medical insurance like the rest of us, they get better health care than the rest of us non-deviants. Did you know that they are first on the list for internal organs if say an inmate needs a new kidney or whatever, it's ridiculous.
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