This article refers to the black market in prison health care systems that prisoners are taking advantage of. This particular article refers to Texas prison systems, where they charge$100 co-pay each year for that would cover all the individuals’ health care visits. This “co-pay” system also applies to 42 other states for non-emergency, patient initiated visits. The black mail system used by prisoners in an interesting concept. One prisoner that can’t afford the co-pay would get unlimited free visits. This prisoner then would buddy up with another prisoner that can afford it, but chooses not to pay it because he will use the poor prisoner to get medicine for him for something in exchange. This is essentially doubling the costs of one prisoners’ visit, causing that state to spend more money, considering they are losing out of over 50,000 co-pays. The aging prison population problem goes hand in hand with this. Some prisoners in our systems are to the point in age where they are about to die. In my opinion, I think we should just let out old prisoners because at that point it is just costing the state more money to medicate them. I will say, there needs to be clear judgment on whether or not to release them, but if they are old and aren’t a future threat to society, let them out. When they get out, they would then have to pay to medicate themselves, rather than for the state to pay to medicate them. The black mail system and aging prison population are two vital reasons our health care budget is so much. In our book, it mentioned telemedicine, where prisoners video-conference with doctors so the doctors can examine through the phone rather than at the prison. Arizona has saved $237,000 by using this program. Although this can be a money saver, I can also see how prisoners may persuade doctors to false-prescribe. I do not think that this would be a huge problem, but you would never know when a mistake would happen. If this was this case, I do not think it would happen very often. Re-thinking the co-pay system and aging prison population while considering telemedicine could potentially lower the prison health care budget, saving the state money. -lilbaby001
I agree that older prisoners should be getting let out. Older people, in general, cost more to keep healthy as they get older, and if they are in prison, then the people paying for that older person to get treatment is the taxpayers. I think that we should be careful though who we let out because if the old person is still a danger to society then no we should not let them out, but if they are old, and you can just tell that they are done with that way of life send them home to be with their family while they still have time on earth and make them pay for their healthcare. -Legion001
First off, I would like to say that I think it is fantastic that this article is written by a prisoner. He obviously has used his time in prison well getting very well educated and writing articles for the prison newspaper. This article is about the problem that is the prison healthcare system. The prison healthcare system is trying in many different ways to pay for prisoner healthcare. Prisoners deserve healthcare because they are humans too, but that means that someone has to pay for it and it is a costly industry. The state that the article focuses the most on is Texas. The article talks about how Texas is one of forty-two states that have a co-pay system in the prison system for healthcare for the inmates. The co-payment is $100. I think this is a good idea because if they are in the real world they will have to contribute to society and one of those ways is paying your way. An example of paying your way is paying for your own healthcare. There is a problem though that this article goes into detail about. This problem is that this co-payment is not even making a dent in the payment of healthcare for all of the inmates. An example of this is in 2014 Michigan’s budget for the healthcare of all of the inmates was $300 million. The state did not even collect $200 thousand of it. Yes, that is better than none, but the big picture shows that what they gathered did very very little pay for any of the healthcare. This co-payment system has also created another problem that is also hurting the prison system. This problem is black market healthcare. Inmates are pretty clever in getting around the system and still getting the necessary treatments for minor things without paying. In the Texas prison system, it is estimated that around 50,000 inmates are participating in the black market. That is a lot of money that the state is not being able to use because those inmates are not paying into the system for their healthcare needs. -Legion001
I agree with you that inmates are pretty clever. We don’t give them enough credit. If we underestimate them thinking of them as just animals in a cage, then they will get away a lot. This issue could have easily been avoided. However, no one thought about the loopholes in the system that could potentially be exploited. We need to start considering these loopholes before we put a new system in place. Sexy_in_Bikini 001
In this article, the prison "Black Market" is discussed. A prison in Texas started requiring a co-pay of $100 from each inmate to cover the medical costs for them for a year. However, there is a large percentage - about fifty percent - of inmates who are not required to pay this fee because they are indigent. This system was designed to help with the overwhelming healthcare cost prisons have to pay over the course of a year, but sadly a $100 co-pay barely made any difference at all, covering only about $200,000 out of a $300 million healthcare budget. This co-payment also created new problems, rather than fixing any. Prisoners who were exempt from the co-payment would visit the nurse with made up or exaggerated illnesses or injuries in order to obtain different medicines for other inmates - who refused to pay the co-payment - in exchange for various items from commissary that were worth far less. Once this practice became standard, the inmates would take advantage of this system and obtain medicine just to sell it at a high price to other inmates who did not want to pay the co-payment; thus, the prison "black market" was born. The prison has decided this is not a way to fix the issue, so prisons are still trying to find way to help pay for the expenses of healthcare. Although a good portion of the prison population follows the rules and tries to stay in line to get "good time", some don't and they ruin good things for everybody else. This co-pay would have helped - even just a small amount - with the expenses of providing inmates with good healthcare, but since some inmates when given an inch take a mile, this seemingly fair fee will not continue. Evidently a co-payment is not the solution to the issue of healthcare cost. I am not sure how one would go about solving this issue, but obviously a co-pay is not the way to do that so prisons need to experiment and explore different options in order to find the one that works the best and ultimately *helps*, rather than causes more problems for prisons to deal with. -Reid001
Seeing through the plan at what it can be turned into is very vital because of what can happen when abuse begins to make a system fail. I agree that while this may be raising some funding, it is not nearly enough to be used as a buffer for the budget of prison healthcare. -Blues001
This is a great article to read because of the vast amount of information it presents. See how prisoners are being taken advantage of to pay for a co-pay for medical services just does not sit well and I think the well versed individuals creating these plans need to look at other ways to attain funding. Seeing the numbers that Michigan had only collected a total of 200,000 dollars for the entire year when it costs roughly 300 million for all the health care. I believe it is great to see that some progress is being made with raising funds for prisons but this does not even touch something close to what it really costs a prison for healthcare. The indignant do not have to pay this copay each year and the author explains how the abuse to this system is causing a "black market" effect in the health care systems inside prisons. A trade system then forms for one inmate to go to a prison hospital to obtain drugs for ailments that do not exist and then trades those drugs at a high rate for commissary as a form of currency due to being indignant. That is the issue that many new reform ideas face is that it can cater to one side or the other in terms of economic status but seeing that this was written by a current inmate shows that there already is a loophole for abuse of the program. Once one gap is found, inmates can find ways of ripping it apart and that ultimately just results in more tax dollars being wasted for in-prison currency. We do need to find new ways of obtaining the funding needed to help with health care but any given plan that may be implemented can result in inmates finding a loophole for it to cater to them or favor their plans to create a "black market". A national rise in co pay systems for prisons is good because it is raising some funding but there has to be a more efficient way to not allow a plan to backfire and bleed tax payers of more of their money. -Blues001
I agree that this article provided a lot of great and useful information for anyone interested in the criminal justice system. The Michigan statistics are very interesting to me a well. The fact that they only made $200,000 on health care for an entire year that cost them about $300,000,000 is crazy, and something that should have been addressed more thoroughly before several other states decided to use this system. -psych001
As much as the co-pay was trying to help fund medical expenses for prisoners it wasn't nearly enough to fund the entire amount. I agree that those who didn't have to pay took advantage of it to help others. Which later ends up turning into the "black market". There definitely needs to be some way that prison health services can be funded. -Ram001
At first, this sounds like a really good idea. Inmates have to pay their way to get the healthcare they need. Those who don’t have enough money are covered allowing them to get the health that they also need. Everyone is getting healthcare while we as taxpayers are spending less. However, this is not how things turned out. The prison systems unintentionally created a new trading system for inmates. As the example stated, the indignant prisoner can get the drugs that the other inmates want for commissary pay. These drugs alone can also be used as payment. By making this co-payment a requirement, they made drugs far more accessible. This not only hurts the inmates, but this requirement also costs more. This is just another one of those situations in which something that was meant to do good caused an even larger problem. What I found interesting is that 42 states are taking part in this new system even though the numbers show that it is costing more money. I’m trying to figure out how exactly the people making this system didn’t see this coming. The second major issue that was brought up was about aging prisoners. As prisoners get older, they require medicine for various health issues. Common medications that are required by older people are pain killers which can include drugs like oxycodone. When so many people are abusing the system and getting the pain killers that they want, the prison will run out faster. This of course will require a lot more money. In my opinion, if an older inmate has shown signs the he/she has changed and pose no threat to the community, then they should be let out of prison. They are getting too expensive to take care of and they have learned from their mistake (this is assuming that they have served their sentence and are no longer a threat). I found this to be a fascinating issue and I’m curious to see how the system will try to fix it. Sexy_in_Bikini 001
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice decided to charge prisoners a $100 co-payment tho cover all of their visits to prison health services for a year. However this co-payment is not required from prisoners who are indigent. 50% of inmates in TDCJ are indigent out of the 140,000. From what I have seen in the article the $100 from each prisoner was to help pay for the medical expenses for each prisoner. Yet despite the money from the prisoners, the TDCJ had requested $247 million from the state to maintain the cost of medical expenses for all inmates. So receiving co payments from prisoners did not exactly help fund medical expenses that much, at least with Texas it didn't. 42 states have adopted a form of co-payment for non emergency visits with medical staff in jail or prisons. The same situation has happened in Michigan as well. In 2014 they have collected $200,000 out of a $300 million prison health care budget. The $100 co-payments had created a "black market" in health services that ended up inflating prison health costs. And at the same time it is doing little to improve the health care system. The author of this article, Jeremy Busby, is a former prisoner who has seen first hand how this became a problem. For example two different inmates decided to work together and help each other out. One of them refused to pay the $100 and the other is indigent who gets to go to the doctor for no charge. One inmate decided to go to the doctor just to get his partner the medication that he needs. In exchange he gets commissary items such as coffee and cookies. And not just the prison doctors but he also has gone to hospitals to obtain even more medications to sell to more inmates. Out of the half of inmates that are indigent 50,000 are also participating in the black market business that has occurred. The states needs to find some way so that they can afford health care for their inmates without having to get money from the inmates themselves. Especially with the number of inmates with long sentences that have been in prison for a life sentence or so. The co-pay is what has caused a black market trade in prisons. -Ram001
I agree with the fact that there is no possible way you can solve this problem. I do think that it's useful for the prisoners that use it for real issues, but what do you do about the inmates that use it to sell to others and make a profit out of it. This is just creating a problem within the prison system that isn't needed. -lilbaby001
To help lower their health care budget, Texas came up with a co payment. There are different co payments for which each state that has adopted this policy. Texas prisons decided to acquire $100 from inmates that could afford health care for a year, but low income/ poor inmates do not have to pay. Yet, there is still a limit on the amount of times and for what type of “illness or injury” inmates might have. This was not only supposed to lower the amount of times an inmate went to the infirmary but also help pay the amount of money being used when being there. Which created a “black market” between the inmates. Since, poor people don't have to pay for any type of health care, they benefit of those who don’t want to pay for it. It created a trade between benefits each person gets with the amount of money that is paid for by taxpayers. When benefits are given to certain people that are incarcerated, it creates a upper hand for those to take advantage of one another. There will always be a sense on dominance in a group of people when in prison, but using co payments creates a bigger problem. It could cause more contraband flow between the inmates and correctional officers. I think that is one of the reasons why the budget in Texas has been terrible even with the co payment established. When it comes for inmates, I think there should be a sense of equalization. For the reason being that there should be less inmates given the “feeling” that they are better than other inmates and can take advantage. Which would also start with the correctional officer putting that policy in action because there are some correctional officers that are the ones that let contraband in. taco001
I do agree with how the medical co pay that you mentioned is just harming the prison systems. Also, that there might not be a way to fix completely. I mentioned in my blog that if the prison systems were a little more equal with how they distribute benefits with the inmates then they would have as many problems. taco001
This article refers to the black market in prison health care systems that prisoners are taking advantage of. This particular article refers to Texas prison systems, where they charge$100 co-pay each year for that would cover all the individuals’ health care visits. This “co-pay” system also applies to 42 other states for non-emergency, patient initiated visits. The black mail system used by prisoners in an interesting concept. One prisoner that can’t afford the co-pay would get unlimited free visits. This prisoner then would buddy up with another prisoner that can afford it, but chooses not to pay it because he will use the poor prisoner to get medicine for him for something in exchange. This is essentially doubling the costs of one prisoners’ visit, causing that state to spend more money, considering they are losing out of over 50,000 co-pays. The aging prison population problem goes hand in hand with this. Some prisoners in our systems are to the point in age where they are about to die. In my opinion, I think we should just let out old prisoners because at that point it is just costing the state more money to medicate them. I will say, there needs to be clear judgment on whether or not to release them, but if they are old and aren’t a future threat to society, let them out. When they get out, they would then have to pay to medicate themselves, rather than for the state to pay to medicate them. The black mail system and aging prison population are two vital reasons our health care budget is so much. In our book, it mentioned telemedicine, where prisoners video-conference with doctors so the doctors can examine through the phone rather than at the prison. Arizona has saved $237,000 by using this program. Although this can be a money saver, I can also see how prisoners may persuade doctors to false-prescribe. I do not think that this would be a huge problem, but you would never know when a mistake would happen. If this was this case, I do not think it would happen very often. Re-thinking the co-pay system and aging prison population while considering telemedicine could potentially lower the prison health care budget, saving the state money. -lilbaby001
ReplyDeleteI agree that older prisoners should be getting let out. Older people, in general, cost more to keep healthy as they get older, and if they are in prison, then the people paying for that older person to get treatment is the taxpayers. I think that we should be careful though who we let out because if the old person is still a danger to society then no we should not let them out, but if they are old, and you can just tell that they are done with that way of life send them home to be with their family while they still have time on earth and make them pay for their healthcare. -Legion001
DeleteFirst off, I would like to say that I think it is fantastic that this article is written by a prisoner. He obviously has used his time in prison well getting very well educated and writing articles for the prison newspaper. This article is about the problem that is the prison healthcare system. The prison healthcare system is trying in many different ways to pay for prisoner healthcare. Prisoners deserve healthcare because they are humans too, but that means that someone has to pay for it and it is a costly industry. The state that the article focuses the most on is Texas. The article talks about how Texas is one of forty-two states that have a co-pay system in the prison system for healthcare for the inmates. The co-payment is $100. I think this is a good idea because if they are in the real world they will have to contribute to society and one of those ways is paying your way. An example of paying your way is paying for your own healthcare. There is a problem though that this article goes into detail about. This problem is that this co-payment is not even making a dent in the payment of healthcare for all of the inmates. An example of this is in 2014 Michigan’s budget for the healthcare of all of the inmates was $300 million. The state did not even collect $200 thousand of it. Yes, that is better than none, but the big picture shows that what they gathered did very very little pay for any of the healthcare. This co-payment system has also created another problem that is also hurting the prison system. This problem is black market healthcare. Inmates are pretty clever in getting around the system and still getting the necessary treatments for minor things without paying. In the Texas prison system, it is estimated that around 50,000 inmates are participating in the black market. That is a lot of money that the state is not being able to use because those inmates are not paying into the system for their healthcare needs. -Legion001
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that inmates are pretty clever. We don’t give them enough credit. If we underestimate them thinking of them as just animals in a cage, then they will get away a lot. This issue could have easily been avoided. However, no one thought about the loopholes in the system that could potentially be exploited. We need to start considering these loopholes before we put a new system in place. Sexy_in_Bikini 001
DeleteIn this article, the prison "Black Market" is discussed. A prison in Texas started requiring a co-pay of $100 from each inmate to cover the medical costs for them for a year. However, there is a large percentage - about fifty percent - of inmates who are not required to pay this fee because they are indigent. This system was designed to help with the overwhelming healthcare cost prisons have to pay over the course of a year, but sadly a $100 co-pay barely made any difference at all, covering only about $200,000 out of a $300 million healthcare budget. This co-payment also created new problems, rather than fixing any. Prisoners who were exempt from the co-payment would visit the nurse with made up or exaggerated illnesses or injuries in order to obtain different medicines for other inmates - who refused to pay the co-payment - in exchange for various items from commissary that were worth far less. Once this practice became standard, the inmates would take advantage of this system and obtain medicine just to sell it at a high price to other inmates who did not want to pay the co-payment; thus, the prison "black market" was born. The prison has decided this is not a way to fix the issue, so prisons are still trying to find way to help pay for the expenses of healthcare. Although a good portion of the prison population follows the rules and tries to stay in line to get "good time", some don't and they ruin good things for everybody else. This co-pay would have helped - even just a small amount - with the expenses of providing inmates with good healthcare, but since some inmates when given an inch take a mile, this seemingly fair fee will not continue. Evidently a co-payment is not the solution to the issue of healthcare cost. I am not sure how one would go about solving this issue, but obviously a co-pay is not the way to do that so prisons need to experiment and explore different options in order to find the one that works the best and ultimately *helps*, rather than causes more problems for prisons to deal with.
ReplyDelete-Reid001
Seeing through the plan at what it can be turned into is very vital because of what can happen when abuse begins to make a system fail. I agree that while this may be raising some funding, it is not nearly enough to be used as a buffer for the budget of prison healthcare. -Blues001
DeleteThis is a great article to read because of the vast amount of information it presents. See how prisoners are being taken advantage of to pay for a co-pay for medical services just does not sit well and I think the well versed individuals creating these plans need to look at other ways to attain funding. Seeing the numbers that Michigan had only collected a total of 200,000 dollars for the entire year when it costs roughly 300 million for all the health care. I believe it is great to see that some progress is being made with raising funds for prisons but this does not even touch something close to what it really costs a prison for healthcare. The indignant do not have to pay this copay each year and the author explains how the abuse to this system is causing a "black market" effect in the health care systems inside prisons. A trade system then forms for one inmate to go to a prison hospital to obtain drugs for ailments that do not exist and then trades those drugs at a high rate for commissary as a form of currency due to being indignant. That is the issue that many new reform ideas face is that it can cater to one side or the other in terms of economic status but seeing that this was written by a current inmate shows that there already is a loophole for abuse of the program. Once one gap is found, inmates can find ways of ripping it apart and that ultimately just results in more tax dollars being wasted for in-prison currency. We do need to find new ways of obtaining the funding needed to help with health care but any given plan that may be implemented can result in inmates finding a loophole for it to cater to them or favor their plans to create a "black market". A national rise in co pay systems for prisons is good because it is raising some funding but there has to be a more efficient way to not allow a plan to backfire and bleed tax payers of more of their money. -Blues001
ReplyDeleteI agree that this article provided a lot of great and useful information for anyone interested in the criminal justice system. The Michigan statistics are very interesting to me a well. The fact that they only made $200,000 on health care for an entire year that cost them about $300,000,000 is crazy, and something that should have been addressed more thoroughly before several other states decided to use this system. -psych001
DeleteAs much as the co-pay was trying to help fund medical expenses for prisoners it wasn't nearly enough to fund the entire amount. I agree that those who didn't have to pay took advantage of it to help others. Which later ends up turning into the "black market". There definitely needs to be some way that prison health services can be funded.
Delete-Ram001
At first, this sounds like a really good idea. Inmates have to pay their way to get the healthcare they need. Those who don’t have enough money are covered allowing them to get the health that they also need. Everyone is getting healthcare while we as taxpayers are spending less. However, this is not how things turned out. The prison systems unintentionally created a new trading system for inmates. As the example stated, the indignant prisoner can get the drugs that the other inmates want for commissary pay. These drugs alone can also be used as payment. By making this co-payment a requirement, they made drugs far more accessible. This not only hurts the inmates, but this requirement also costs more. This is just another one of those situations in which something that was meant to do good caused an even larger problem. What I found interesting is that 42 states are taking part in this new system even though the numbers show that it is costing more money. I’m trying to figure out how exactly the people making this system didn’t see this coming. The second major issue that was brought up was about aging prisoners. As prisoners get older, they require medicine for various health issues. Common medications that are required by older people are pain killers which can include drugs like oxycodone. When so many people are abusing the system and getting the pain killers that they want, the prison will run out faster. This of course will require a lot more money. In my opinion, if an older inmate has shown signs the he/she has changed and pose no threat to the community, then they should be let out of prison. They are getting too expensive to take care of and they have learned from their mistake (this is assuming that they have served their sentence and are no longer a threat). I found this to be a fascinating issue and I’m curious to see how the system will try to fix it. Sexy_in_Bikini 001
ReplyDeleteThe Texas Department of Criminal Justice decided to charge prisoners a $100 co-payment tho cover all of their visits to prison health services for a year. However this co-payment is not required from prisoners who are indigent. 50% of inmates in TDCJ are indigent out of the 140,000. From what I have seen in the article the $100 from each prisoner was to help pay for the medical expenses for each prisoner. Yet despite the money from the prisoners, the TDCJ had requested $247 million from the state to maintain the cost of medical expenses for all inmates. So receiving co payments from prisoners did not exactly help fund medical expenses that much, at least with Texas it didn't. 42 states have adopted a form of co-payment for non emergency visits with medical staff in jail or prisons. The same situation has happened in Michigan as well. In 2014 they have collected $200,000 out of a $300 million prison health care budget. The $100 co-payments had created a "black market" in health services that ended up inflating prison health costs. And at the same time it is doing little to improve the health care system. The author of this article, Jeremy Busby, is a former prisoner who has seen first hand how this became a problem. For example two different inmates decided to work together and help each other out. One of them refused to pay the $100 and the other is indigent who gets to go to the doctor for no charge. One inmate decided to go to the doctor just to get his partner the medication that he needs. In exchange he gets commissary items such as coffee and cookies. And not just the prison doctors but he also has gone to hospitals to obtain even more medications to sell to more inmates. Out of the half of inmates that are indigent 50,000 are also participating in the black market business that has occurred. The states needs to find some way so that they can afford health care for their inmates without having to get money from the inmates themselves. Especially with the number of inmates with long sentences that have been in prison for a life sentence or so. The co-pay is what has caused a black market trade in prisons.
ReplyDelete-Ram001
I agree with the fact that there is no possible way you can solve this problem. I do think that it's useful for the prisoners that use it for real issues, but what do you do about the inmates that use it to sell to others and make a profit out of it. This is just creating a problem within the prison system that isn't needed. -lilbaby001
ReplyDeleteTo help lower their health care budget, Texas came up with a co payment. There are different co payments for which each state that has adopted this policy. Texas prisons decided to acquire $100 from inmates that could afford health care for a year, but low income/ poor inmates do not have to pay. Yet, there is still a limit on the amount of times and for what type of “illness or injury” inmates might have. This was not only supposed to lower the amount of times an inmate went to the infirmary but also help pay the amount of money being used when being there. Which created a “black market” between the inmates. Since, poor people don't have to pay for any type of health care, they benefit of those who don’t want to pay for it. It created a trade between benefits each person gets with the amount of money that is paid for by taxpayers. When benefits are given to certain people that are incarcerated, it creates a upper hand for those to take advantage of one another. There will always be a sense on dominance in a group of people when in prison, but using co payments creates a bigger problem. It could cause more contraband flow between the inmates and correctional officers. I think that is one of the reasons why the budget in Texas has been terrible even with the co payment established. When it comes for inmates, I think there should be a sense of equalization. For the reason being that there should be less inmates given the “feeling” that they are better than other inmates and can take advantage. Which would also start with the correctional officer putting that policy in action because there are some correctional officers that are the ones that let contraband in. taco001
ReplyDeleteI do agree with how the medical co pay that you mentioned is just harming the prison systems. Also, that there might not be a way to fix completely. I mentioned in my blog that if the prison systems were a little more equal with how they distribute benefits with the inmates then they would have as many problems. taco001
ReplyDelete