Lawsuit, Anyone? Prison Health Care Lacking for HIV-Positive Inmates
The state of California has agreed to settle a huge class-action lawsuit that alleged the state’s prison system engages in “cruel and unusual punishment” by denying adequate medical care to its 160,000 inmates. The settlement commits the California Department of Corrections to implement various health care improvements over several years, with an independent medical panel auditing the progress. The suit followed years of complaints about California’s prison medical care system, especially around chronic illnesses such as AIDS or diabetes, which disproportionately impact incarcerated individuals. Unfortunately, inattention to meeting the medical needs of sick prisoners is not isolated to California, as the American–Statesman recently demonstrated. At ASA, we often hear inmates’ horror stories about inferior medical care, and usually it’s not just sour grapes. Especially egregious — because it would be so easy to correct, except for management’s attitude — is denying people their medications. Near-perfect adherence to treatment is the key to surviving HIV disease, but if adherence is thwarted, then disease advances to the extremely demanding and expensive AIDS stage. Humanitarian issues aside, even half-enlightened managers should see that indifference or obstructionism is not in the system’s (or the taxpayers’) best interest. TDCJ, our prison system, gets high marks (all things being relative) on many fronts. There is no excuse for medical care not being among those, especially since prestigious state medical schools are responsible for care delivery. Maybe someone needs to file a similar lawsuit in Texas.
This article appears in April 26 • 2002.