Privatizing the Florida Department of Corrections’s various prison services has long meant good business.
Overcharging for telephone calls, messages across platforms such as JPay, and allowing vendors to raise the cost of food items sold in the institutional canteens 10% every six months were easy ways for businesses to make money. Still, these financial abuses pale in comparison to the effects that privatized healthcare has had on inmate populations.
Most Florida state legislators appear to think of prison healthcare only as a matter of dollars and cents.
But according to the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a government agency that has custody of an inmate must treat the inmate humanely and provide adequate medical care. It’s not happening — at least not in Florida.
As inmates age, their medical needs increase. In the last 10 years, the number of inmates in Florida over age 50 has grown by more than 70%, while the overall prison population has declined. As of June 30, 2019, over 27% of the Florida Department of Corrections inmate population was age 50 or older, a higher percentage than any other state. Healthcare now consumes about 21% of all Florida prison costs, the same as most other states. Having such a large elderly population obviously requires more medical care instead of less.
In a recent segment of a news series titled “Crisis in Corrections,” investigative reporter Kylie McGivern detailed how the FDC is negotiating with 10 vendors on a new healthcare contract. While the current contract with Centurion appeared to save money at the onset, the cost of litigating the skyrocketing number of subsequent lawsuits for inadequate medical treatment has proven very expensive. The cold hard truth is these vendors cut costs by reducing, and in some cases eliminating, opportunities for inmates to receive vital treatment for mostly chronic conditions. Some cost-saving policies require that certain requests for medical treatment automatically be denied at least one time before being approved. Sometimes it is denied more than once. Add to this medical policies that require an inmate to wait a specified period of time before a subsequent request can be submitted. This means an inmate must endure prolonged suffering being treated.
Other states have been down this road and eventually found a better way to treat inmates. In Texas, for example, the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center began handling prison healthcare as part of that state’s attempt to avoid expensive litigation. Florida has a robust university system with extensive medical schools. Medical students at Nova Southeastern University treat patients as general practitioners, optometrists, and dentists. Students all across the state of Florida could be employed to treat inmates in the same manner.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, should mandate state university medical programs provide healthcare to the inmates he is responsible for. If not that, then he should ensure inmates in his charge receive adequate medical care.
Robert Lefleur is a former prisoner of the Florida Department of Corrections and a prison consultant.
