Texas Thinking About Private Healthcare For Inmates

www.statesman.com...

A day after it was revealed that top aides to Gov. Rick Perry are quietly exploring a plan to hire private contractors to take over parts or all of Texas' cash-strapped health care system for convicted felons, legislative leaders on Wednesday gave an initial cold shoulder to the idea.

"The concern is that private vendors would come in and cherry-pick the best parts of the system, and leave everything else because that's not where the money is," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston , who participated in the meeting.

Even so, Texas' costs have been spiraling upward for several years, and the two universities have increasingly complained they are losing big money on the contracts.

The current prison health care budget is more than $464 million a year, approximately $51 million short of what medical officials say their actual costs are.

This is interesting. I have not heard about this before. The article says other states have tried this but have gotten mixed results.

The article also says some of the talks have been behind closed doors and have been raising some eyebrows. I dont really know where I stand on this subject because Im not sure if this means that inmates will need to buy healthcare while in jail or how the corporations will pay for this. How will the companies that provide the healthcare pay for this? I have no idea.

I think this idea dosent really have enough information so far.