Speaker 1: Fellow conspiracy realist. We returned to you this evening with
Speaker 1: a classic episode about a terrible, terrible conspiracy that continues
Speaker 1: today in twenty twenty four and continued far before we
Speaker 1: first spoke about this in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and we've learned so much more about the
Speaker 2: prison system and healthcare, you know, as two separate things
Speaker 2: since that time. I'm specifically thinking back to the discussion
Speaker 2: you guys had with the Lava for Good folks, like
Speaker 2: all the different hosts there, and just learning about the
Speaker 2: dangers of the prison system. But the weirdest thing, the
Speaker 2: weirdest thing for me was learning from them through you guys,
Speaker 2: that private prisons are actually way smaller of a deal
Speaker 2: than I thought because there's so fewer of them.
Speaker 3: But yet they're the ones that get all the headlines.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, well that's the headlines, and that's at least
Speaker 2: my perception. And the reason why that was mind blowing
Speaker 2: to me is because I imagined there was pretty good healthcare
Speaker 2: for prisoners because there is a profit motive to keep
Speaker 2: that prisoner alive and in jail, because the private prison
Speaker 2: gets money per person per bed, right, But that's not
Speaker 2: that's not the way it goes in most prisons.
Speaker 3: Accurate. Let's check out the episode.
Speaker 4: From UFOs to Psychic Powers and government conspiracies. History is
Speaker 4: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 4: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 1: A production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,
Speaker 2: my name is Nolan.
Speaker 1: They call me Ben. When we were joined with our
Speaker 1: super producer Paul Michigan, control decand most importantly, you are you.
Speaker 1: You are here that makes this stuff they don't want
Speaker 1: you to know. We've been going down some dark alley
Speaker 1: ways figuratively speaking or conversationally speaking in the past few episodes,
Speaker 1: and you know, honestly, we're getting to a point where
Speaker 1: maybe we should do something a little more lighthearted in
Speaker 1: the future. Well that's not true. We have a lighthearted
Speaker 1: interview for the Legend of Cocaine Island that's out now
Speaker 1: by the time you hear this. So that's a fun listen, right.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, We've got stuff unicorns don't want you to
Speaker 2: know on the slate.
Speaker 1: M Okay, yeah, I know. Well it's weird because I
Speaker 1: was thinking I was reading something about unicorns oddly enough,
Speaker 1: now that you mentioned this, wherein someone who was a
Speaker 1: zoologist of some sort of another said, based on the
Speaker 1: fact that they had a single horn, and based on
Speaker 1: the fact that was positioned in the center of their
Speaker 1: forehead facing forward, what that tells us about their behavior.
Speaker 1: It's very similar to rhinos. So unicorns, if they did exist,
Speaker 1: would probably be legerent, antagonistic animals, capable of great violence.
Speaker 3: They'd be very stabby, and that's something unicorns don't want
Speaker 3: you to know.
Speaker 2: That's right, not the profile, Yeah, exactly, all the glitter
Speaker 2: and all the shininess.
Speaker 1: And they're weird thing with virgins.
Speaker 3: Have you seen that movie Legend with a very very
Speaker 3: young Tom.
Speaker 1: Cruise and a very awesome Tim Curry.
Speaker 3: Very awesome Tim Currey wearing a giant rubber satan suit,
Speaker 3: And there's a whole thing where they like the unicorns
Speaker 3: play a big part in that, very very important.
Speaker 1: There's also the animated The Last Unicorn, which is really sad. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was thinking about the Brie Larson, her directorial debut,
Speaker 2: something about the Unicorn Store something to that.
Speaker 3: Effects on Netflix. Now it is is it spoiler alert?
Speaker 3: Does not seem to have anything to actually do with unicorns,
Speaker 3: I know, just putting that out.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you guys, you've saved me a few hours.
Speaker 3: No, it else has absolutely nothing to do with unicorns.
Speaker 1: The healthcare in the prison systems. So the US healthcare
Speaker 1: system is by any measure, no matter how you look
Speaker 1: at it, no matter what your opinion is, and everybody
Speaker 1: has opinions about this, by any measure, it's anomalous. One
Speaker 1: of the world's wealthiest countries with one of the world's
Speaker 1: worst performing healthcare sticks. You know, like not in comparison
Speaker 1: to very very impoverished countries so much as in comparison
Speaker 1: to other countries we would consider peer countries economically. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And there's the one thing we all agree on is
Speaker 1: that this thing is rife with problems. It's lousy with
Speaker 1: problems and things that don't work, and it's complicated by
Speaker 1: the fact that there is a ton of money wrapped
Speaker 1: up in this issue. Doctors make a ton of money, hospitals,
Speaker 1: of course, insurance companies make tons of money. There's a
Speaker 1: lot writing on this, and that means there's also extensive
Speaker 1: propaganda in play. We will hear some people say, well,
Speaker 1: the entire problem with US healthcare is that it is
Speaker 1: to a great degree run by privatized insurance companies, that
Speaker 1: they're the root of the problem as they continually put
Speaker 1: profits over the greater good. For some people, that's fighting words.
Speaker 1: For other people, it's like, you know, shrug, dot gift,
Speaker 1: that's what companies do, that's what for profit businesses do.
Speaker 1: Other people say, no, it's broken. But the problem is
Speaker 1: not honest, red blooded American business. It's that the government
Speaker 1: is involved. And every time Uncle Sam is involved in something,
Speaker 1: it's going to be ruinous because the government is inefficient
Speaker 1: and corrupt. Sometimes that's a sincere argument. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: Star of the Beast argument. Depends on what you hear about.
Speaker 1: And today's episode is not about that cartoonishly tragically comic
Speaker 1: state of medical care in the US overall. That's probably
Speaker 1: its own podcast. Today's episode instead is about one of
Speaker 1: the worst case scenarios for anyone who lives in this
Speaker 1: country and ever gets sick orrever needs some sort of
Speaker 1: medical treatment. Healthcare in prison.
Speaker 2: Two things you don't want to be a part of.
Speaker 2: Sick and incarcerated. So just to get a better understanding
Speaker 2: of this problem, it's best to start with some statistics.
Speaker 2: We all love those. So let's look at just the
Speaker 2: US population in general. As of twenty eighteen, the population
Speaker 2: in this country was three hundred and twenty seven point
Speaker 2: two million human beings. Twenty eight point seven percent of
Speaker 2: the population is under the age of eighteen, so you know,
Speaker 2: that's almost a third of the people very very young.
Speaker 2: About fifteen point six of the population is over the
Speaker 2: age of sixty five. And then that leaves the people
Speaker 2: who are not minors, you know, who are eighteen and
Speaker 2: they're also not they're above eighteen below senior citizen, which
Speaker 2: are going to be the primary, the primary age range
Speaker 2: for people who are incarcerated.
Speaker 1: Right right, the regular, the regular Joe's and James. This
Speaker 1: is interesting that fifteen point six percent number for elderly
Speaker 1: and senior citizens makes sense because do in large part
Speaker 1: to the way the healthcare system here does or does
Speaker 1: not work, We have a disturbingly low life expectancy compared
Speaker 1: to other what are called first world countries or other
Speaker 1: developed countries is a better phrase. So's that's the population
Speaker 1: by the numbers. What about the medical stuff? Do we
Speaker 1: have any stats for that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the US spends way more on healthcare than
Speaker 3: any other nation. On this here globe three and forty
Speaker 3: eight dollars per person, which amounts nearly eighteen percent of GDP,
Speaker 3: which seems bonkers to me. Government funded Medicare and Medicaid
Speaker 3: account for more than a dollar of every three dollars
Speaker 3: of US healthcare spending, and a dollar every four dollars
Speaker 3: in the federal budget. The entire federal budget, we know
Speaker 3: is a is like seems like one of those imaginary numbers,
Speaker 3: you know, the trillions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's largely, it is largely a series of which
Speaker 1: is promises, increasingly ambitious pitches. I was going to say
Speaker 1: from Congress. Absolutely, and and it's been growing, right, it's
Speaker 1: been growing Medicare at least that more than twice the
Speaker 1: rate of inflation. It's forecast to accelerate as what we
Speaker 1: call the baby boomer generation ages increasingly into that elderly demographic.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing upon which we cannot blame millennials. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I know some of us in the audience are dig that.
Speaker 2: But yeah, and then that's just for Medicare. That's that's
Speaker 2: the part that the government helps out with, right, right,
Speaker 2: And that's for people who do have Medicare, you're considered
Speaker 2: to have healthcare. There are a lot of other healthcare
Speaker 2: comes from employers, kind of like what we have sitting
Speaker 2: in this room, including Michigan control over there.
Speaker 1: You're absolutely right, Matt twenty sixteen. Private health insurance covered
Speaker 1: more people than the government does. So you pay like
Speaker 1: think of think of every country as a club. We've
Speaker 1: said this before in previous episodes. The concept of taxes,
Speaker 1: the concept of taxation is at heart in a very
Speaker 1: oversimplified way, it's the same thing as paying dues to
Speaker 1: a club, country club perhaps, sure, a country club, a
Speaker 1: chess club that has a nice HQ, if they have those.
Speaker 1: The idea is, you pay into this thing, and because
Speaker 1: you've paid into this thing, you get certain rights. So
Speaker 1: you're a country club, a golf club, whatever. That goes
Speaker 1: to the maintenance of the place, but it also goes
Speaker 1: to the maintenance of things you use. So the argument
Speaker 1: that people will have is that, well, if you pay
Speaker 1: taxes here in a country, then those taxes should guarantee
Speaker 1: some of your rights, guarantee some maintenance, and then arguably
Speaker 1: they could be in a situation where they pay to
Speaker 1: help keep you alive or at least make your existence
Speaker 1: a little bit less painful than it would be without
Speaker 1: health insurance. Again, not everybody agrees with that. A lot
Speaker 1: of people think privatization is the answer. So that's why
Speaker 1: employer based coverage covers more than half of the population
Speaker 1: for part or all the calendar year. And then there's
Speaker 1: Medicaid nineteen point four percent, Medicare sixteen point seven percent,
Speaker 1: what's called direct purchase, I go out and buy my
Speaker 1: own stuff sixteen point two percent of people either thought
Speaker 1: that was a good idea or were forced to do
Speaker 1: it through things like Cobra right, or military coverage four
Speaker 1: point six percent. You're going to lay your life on
Speaker 1: the line for a country. The least we can do is,
Speaker 1: you know, not put you in the poorhouse if you
Speaker 1: have cancer, although that still happens. But this number doesn't
Speaker 1: answer everything, because despite all these different kind of partial
Speaker 1: band aids for keeping people alive and healthy, twenty eight
Speaker 1: point five million people in this country have no form
Speaker 1: of health insurance whatsoever all the year, all the livelong day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, eight point eight percent. At least that's as of
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Right, that number may have gone up or down a
Speaker 1: little bit, but it hasn't moved a ton yet. It
Speaker 1: may very well in the near future, in the next
Speaker 1: three ten years. Right.
Speaker 3: Not to mention the fact that I don't know how
Speaker 3: this figures is the puzzle here, but I think it's
Speaker 3: fascinating and it certainly should be part of the conversation.
Speaker 3: It costs an average of thirty one thousand dollars per
Speaker 3: inmate per year to incarcerate an individual. It's like tax
Speaker 3: payer money. So it's just crazy to me that if
Speaker 3: we're paying that much to incartrate a person, yet people
Speaker 3: outside of the prison system, we wouldn't even consider spending
Speaker 3: that much on them and their well being.
Speaker 2: It is.
Speaker 1: It is cheaper, or it has been for a number
Speaker 1: of years. It is cheaper for the United States, on
Speaker 1: a state and federal level to send someone to community
Speaker 1: college for two to four years and pay for their
Speaker 1: dorm or their apartment than it is to incarcerate them.
Speaker 1: And that's something I learned via Little Wayne originally true story,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but it's true. It's we can get into
Speaker 1: the political reasons for that, because the argument here doesn't
Speaker 1: bear out when you look at the math. It bears
Speaker 1: out when you look at what people like voting for, right,
Speaker 1: which is a little bit of a simplified way to
Speaker 1: say it, but it's true, and it's a big business.
Speaker 1: The US locks up a lot of people. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this earlier. I was going to say they
Speaker 1: lock up tons of people, and then I read back
Speaker 1: through it, and it's true. If you do the math
Speaker 1: on how much a single person weighs, and you do
Speaker 1: the math on how many people are locked up, we
Speaker 1: are literally locking up tons and tons of people, tons
Speaker 1: of human flesh. Our prison population rate is roughly seven
Speaker 1: hundred per one hundred thousand. That makes it the second
Speaker 1: highest incarceration rate of two hundred and twenty two countries
Speaker 1: tracked by the Institute for Criminal Policy Research, and that
Speaker 1: is such a large net to cast the ICPR study
Speaker 1: right now, the UN doesn't recognize two hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: two countries, so they gave everybody a chance. This country
Speaker 1: locks up a half million more than China, and that
Speaker 1: has a population five times larger than the US. This country,
Speaker 1: and this is a statistic that many of us have
Speaker 1: heard before, and I wish it wasn't still true. This
Speaker 1: country holds twenty five percent of the world's prison population.
Speaker 1: Twenty five percent. Yeah, it's worse though, because the statistic
Speaker 1: that follows right after, we're only five percent of the
Speaker 1: people in the world, which means that, if you think
Speaker 1: about it, just from living here, you have one of
Speaker 1: the highest chances in the world of going to prison.
Speaker 2: Yep, Okay, So what was it we said, three hundred
Speaker 2: and twenty seven something million people in the United States. Well,
Speaker 2: the American criminal justice system holds within it incarcerated human
Speaker 2: beings two point three million people. That's crazy. There are
Speaker 2: and it holds them in over seventeen hundred state prisons.
Speaker 2: There are one hundred and two federal prisons, and then
Speaker 2: eighteen over eighteen hundred juvenile correctional facilities. Then there are
Speaker 2: also like that. Okay, and that's just starting right. Then
Speaker 2: you go down another level. You get to the local jails.
Speaker 2: They wouldn't even be really called a prison, just a jail,
Speaker 2: a holding cell kind of thing. There are three thy
Speaker 2: one hundred and sixty three of those, and there are
Speaker 2: also eighty Native American like they're called Indian country jails.
Speaker 2: Well that's not even talk, dude. We're not even thinking
Speaker 2: about military prisons, the brig yeah, and the oh, the
Speaker 2: detention facilities like immigration facilities.
Speaker 3: The bizarre and labyrinthine network of detention centers. Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's that's a whole on other conversation.
Speaker 1: There, one of which was famously until quite recently, a
Speaker 1: series of fences set up under a bridge. Yeah, civil
Speaker 1: commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, which are still around, mostly privatized,
Speaker 1: but still exists to some degree.
Speaker 2: You can be held without against your will in those facilities.
Speaker 1: And prisons in US territories which occupy an even more
Speaker 1: murky legal space, including Gano, including Guantanamo. Yeah, every year
Speaker 1: six hundred and twenty six thousand people walk out of prison,
Speaker 1: but they go to jail ten point six million times
Speaker 1: each year. Jail and prison are as as many people will,
Speaker 1: as many people attest. Jail and prison are two very
Speaker 1: different beasts. Jail churn is pretty high because most people
Speaker 1: in jail have not been convicted.
Speaker 2: They're just waiting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they've been arrested. They're desperately using that trope and fiction.
Speaker 1: They're one phone call to get a bail bondsman, or
Speaker 1: to get some money together to get out before they
Speaker 1: have to go to trial, or in many, many, many,
Speaker 1: many cases, they are too poor. And you know, justice
Speaker 1: is a slot machine that only takes dollars.
Speaker 3: So if jail is like a holiday, in prison is
Speaker 3: like a living community of some kind in an apartment building.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, So again, jail is like kind of like
Speaker 1: a slot machine that only takes dollars. So other people
Speaker 1: are too poor to make bail and they have to
Speaker 1: stay behind bars until their trial. And we've all seen
Speaker 1: these stories, right, There's somebody who has arrested for something.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a case, wrong place, wrong time, but they
Speaker 1: can't make bail, and so they're in jail for what months,
Speaker 1: and then they go to trial and the judge is like,
Speaker 1: who is this guy?
Speaker 3: Not to mention they're in jail because they've done something.
Speaker 3: Then they can't make bail, so then they lose their
Speaker 3: jobs because they're sitting in jail, and it just creates
Speaker 3: this cycle of being able to not afford anything that
Speaker 3: the system foists upon you, especially then once you are
Speaker 3: convicted and then have some kind of you know, fee
Speaker 3: schedule that you have to deal with, but you've lost
Speaker 3: your job and become unemployable again, probably another conversation, but
Speaker 3: it's a problematic cycle.
Speaker 1: And this number might surprise some folks. Met you recently
Speaker 1: gave us the statistics of some people in jail. But
Speaker 1: of those people in jail, only about one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty thousand or so on any given day have actually
Speaker 1: been convicted, and most of them to take your holiday
Speaker 1: in comparison or the apartment comparisons. They're generally serving sentences
Speaker 1: that are less than a year, and almost half a
Speaker 1: million people are locked up purely because of drug offenses.
Speaker 1: So mainstream media, right, we all know and love our
Speaker 1: favorite fiction films and stories, often depicts the incarcerated population
Speaker 1: in some in some wild extremes, right, there are two
Speaker 1: or three big stereotypes we see people incarcerated. There are
Speaker 1: either woefully disenfranchised, you know what I mean, The system
Speaker 1: is broken. It crushed my life, you know, I got
Speaker 1: arrested wrongfully, but I lost everything while I was waiting
Speaker 1: for my day in court. Or there might be the
Speaker 1: other extreme where these people are absolute suicide squad level
Speaker 1: monsters and the state is being too nice by putting
Speaker 1: these people in time out for life and should just
Speaker 1: kill them. And then you'll see things like red and
Speaker 1: Shawshank redemption right, who who has attained wisdom or higher
Speaker 1: enlightenment despite their physical confines and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: regardless of how these people are depicted in fiction, life
Speaker 1: on the inside is not like what you'll see in
Speaker 1: a lot of those things. Like what's that HBO series
Speaker 1: OZ got praised for being a little more realistic than most.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that show is insanely good. It was also like
Speaker 3: one of the early big HBO dramas, So it has
Speaker 3: this look of like video where it looks very real,
Speaker 3: almost like you're watching a play, but it's like it's
Speaker 3: I love everything about that shows it's super great.
Speaker 2: Does it hold up?
Speaker 1: It does?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: I mean I don't know. It's a little data because
Speaker 3: it's super square, like the framing or whatever. And also
Speaker 3: some of the some of the performances are a little
Speaker 3: over the top, but no, the stuff that it covers,
Speaker 3: it's very theatrical, but it's also very grounded in reality.
Speaker 1: Mmm, sort of a harbinger of the gritty realism of
Speaker 1: Orange is the New Black. So, regardless of any of
Speaker 1: us listening now, regardless of our stance on the prison system,
Speaker 1: whether you think it's chugging right along, whether it's the
Speaker 1: best we can do, even if it's not perfect, whether
Speaker 1: you think it's broken, whether you think it's a system
Speaker 1: meant to oppress certain demographics here in this country. It's
Speaker 1: clear that crime does continue inside the walls of penitentiaries.
Speaker 1: There are gangs everywhere. People love all the vices still,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, drugs, sensual pleasure, old fashioned violence,
Speaker 1: and the chances of that kind of violence are always
Speaker 1: somewhere in the cards. But to activist policymakers and others,
Speaker 1: there is another criminal in the mix here. And it's
Speaker 1: not a criminal that you're going to see on America's
Speaker 1: Most Wanted. It's not a criminal that you will see
Speaker 1: in a highly publicized OJ Simpson level trial, right.
Speaker 2: No, you would see them in the ads in between
Speaker 2: those programs.
Speaker 1: That's right, we're talking about insurance companies. Wait, our insurance
Speaker 1: companies criminals. You might be saying, kind of, let's have
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsor. Is where it gets crazy.
Speaker 1: So well, let's call this part healthcare, profit and public perception.
Speaker 1: In twenty seventeen, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released a
Speaker 1: study and they said that nearly half of the people
Speaker 1: held in jails suffer from some sort of mental illness,
Speaker 1: and more than a quarter have a severe condition such
Speaker 1: as bipolar disorder. And again as we as we noted
Speaker 1: with jail, many of the people in jail are just waiting,
Speaker 1: they're churning through. They haven't been convicted and sentenced to
Speaker 1: that misdemeanor. That's less than a year. But in the
Speaker 1: same year twenty seventeen, the Bureau reported that about two
Speaker 1: thirds of sentenced inmates in jail suffer from drug addiction
Speaker 1: or dependency. And that conclusion they made this is the
Speaker 1: scary part. It comes from numbers in two thousand and
Speaker 1: seven to two thousand and nine, which means it largely
Speaker 1: does not account for the opioid crisis. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wow, that's uh, that's tough. Well, well, here's the
Speaker 2: other thing. So you've got a life sentence, let's say
Speaker 2: you're going to be in prison for a long time.
Speaker 2: You're also going to be dealing with just what happens
Speaker 2: to your body as you're getting older. Just age related stuff, right,
Speaker 2: like all kinds of diseases, all kinds of stuff that
Speaker 2: you need medication for, stuff that you need maybe even
Speaker 2: some I don't know, recovery, physical recovery from and work on.
Speaker 2: And these people are dealing with that. There's also you know,
Speaker 2: we talked about the addiction, the mental illness, and when
Speaker 2: you put these together, kind of as you're saying, Ben
Speaker 2: getting older, being addicted to something, probably maybe continuing to
Speaker 2: be addicted while you're in while you're incarcerated, and then
Speaker 2: also you know, having to deal with the mental illness.
Speaker 2: It all kind of just adds up into this pretty
Speaker 2: brutal thing where you're going to be probably experiencing withdrawal symptoms,
Speaker 2: especially early on in your situation there. So, like I guess,
Speaker 2: the first year of prison, which is what you were saying,
Speaker 2: a lot of people actually only spend about a year
Speaker 2: and there it can be extremely rough on your health.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean imagine if you are, if
Speaker 1: you are encountering withdrawal symptoms from some sort of drug addiction,
Speaker 1: and the medical staff on hand says we're not going
Speaker 1: to give you your drug of choice, but then another
Speaker 1: inmate sidles up to you, maybe in the yard, and says, hey,
Speaker 1: I can help you out if you do something for me.
Speaker 1: Dangerous times right, And now, I guess we can take
Speaker 1: a moment to talk about the politics here, because I'm
Speaker 1: sure as we're exploring this, a lot of us are thinking, well,
Speaker 1: people aren't in prison for good behavior. No one has
Speaker 1: ever helped an old lady across the street so many
Speaker 1: times that they got put in jail, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. You don't go there for being an honors student.
Speaker 1: In terms of like civic mindedness, so there's this kind
Speaker 1: of callous or colder argument that says, well, why should
Speaker 1: we take care of these people if they are a
Speaker 1: detriment to society? Because of that attitude or because of
Speaker 1: that you know, that school of thought, it's very difficult
Speaker 1: for politicians to argue in favor of advocacy for people
Speaker 1: who have medical conditions while they are incarcerated, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Like back in the eighties especially, it
Speaker 1: was political suicide to say we should still treat human
Speaker 1: beings as humans, because then it would be immediately equated
Speaker 1: with being quote unquote soft on crime. And another difficulty
Speaker 1: there a twists there is that it's very difficult in
Speaker 1: many cases for felons to vote. So until the demographics
Speaker 1: that are far more likely to get arrested and far
Speaker 1: more likely to serve longer sentences are voting in larger
Speaker 1: proportionate numbers, then politicians aren't going to go out of
Speaker 1: their way to be I mean largely. It's true. It's
Speaker 1: sad and it's kind of disgusting, but they're not going
Speaker 1: to go out of the way to represent someone who
Speaker 1: they don't see as capable of handing a benefit to them.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a huge downfall of our species, right,
Speaker 1: everything is quid pro quo and stuff you should Know
Speaker 1: has a great episode about how altruism doesn't really exist,
Speaker 1: but no one wants to hear that.
Speaker 2: That's depressing, right, yeah, So well, really fast, I just
Speaker 2: want to talk about something with you guys. Something I
Speaker 2: don't know if this even really fits in the show,
Speaker 2: but something I think we can apply to this is
Speaker 2: the fact that unless you have experienced something in your life,
Speaker 2: or you know someone directly who has experienced something, it's
Speaker 2: very difficult to have true empathy about a situation. And
Speaker 2: I take this to the concept of quitting smoking or
Speaker 2: attempting to quit smoking. Now, just hear me out really fast.
Speaker 2: For a lot of people who have never been addicted
Speaker 2: to something like nicotine and attempted and failed to quit
Speaker 2: that substance or something like that, a lot of people
Speaker 2: will have, at least I've noticed in my experience very
Speaker 2: negative thoughts on alternatives to quitting smoking even or you know,
Speaker 2: other things like that, Like they have an immediate negative
Speaker 2: reaction to something like that unless you are someone who
Speaker 2: has actually attempted and failed to do something like quitting smoking,
Speaker 2: And so I wonder if it's the same thing with
Speaker 2: the prison system and a lot of these other things
Speaker 2: where unless you have that direct experience with it, it's
Speaker 2: very difficult to even see it outside of the negative
Speaker 2: context which has already built up around it societally experiential knowledge.
Speaker 1: Right, like the uh like how the stem cell conversation
Speaker 1: changed when people who were politicians opposed to stem cell
Speaker 1: research realized the benefits it could have for people that
Speaker 1: they personally knew.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean I think so, I mean even
Speaker 2: the CBD oil, Yes, absolutely, you know, I.
Speaker 1: Think it's it's weird because here in here in Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia,
Speaker 1: where we record this podcast, uh one, regardless of where
Speaker 1: you fall in drug criminalization. Uh. I thought it was
Speaker 1: hilarious when we had some we had some politicians when
Speaker 1: the CBDU the Medical Medicinal CBD Bill or whatever was called,
Speaker 1: was first past, the politicians who approved of it spent
Speaker 1: the majority of their time assuring everyone that no one
Speaker 1: would enjoy it. I don't worry. No one is gonna
Speaker 1: have fun. This is just for people with epilepsy.
Speaker 2: So you're sure you cannot get high.
Speaker 1: If I thought people would have anything like a good
Speaker 1: time on this, I would be burning down the capitol.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. I'm still mad that people
Speaker 1: Fox trot.
Speaker 3: He is burning down the capitol. When you smoke a
Speaker 3: bunch of weed in the capitol, Uh.
Speaker 1: Little known fact. Yeah, it's part of the that's part
Speaker 1: of the Georgia congressional slang.
Speaker 3: They say their prayer and then they spark up a doobie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, guy Fox, I don't know if you remember him.
Speaker 2: He thought that barrel was actually full of doobies.
Speaker 1: Yeah no, yeah, yeah, yeahah yes and right. So the
Speaker 1: the reason the politics matter here, the reason they're so fundamental,
Speaker 1: is because this means that exkews the budget allocations for
Speaker 1: a lot of jails and pin tentries. You want to
Speaker 1: spend a lot of money securing the place, right, making
Speaker 1: it hard to walk out of. But why would you
Speaker 1: spend money on healthcare, especially if it means you could
Speaker 1: be accused of going soft on crime. This problem is
Speaker 1: exacerbated in jails that are in rural or poor counties,
Speaker 1: which happens a lot. Jails will tend to be in
Speaker 1: rural and poor counties because they can be advertised as
Speaker 1: a source of jobs right for an ailing community. So
Speaker 1: administrators complain, you know, they say, look, I don't have
Speaker 1: the resources. I can't make the numbers work. How am
Speaker 1: I supposed to hire, train, and supervise doctors and nurses
Speaker 1: right like GPS, let alone specialized medical care? Like, what
Speaker 1: what on earth am I going to be able to
Speaker 1: do to incentivize a medical health professional to work with me?
Speaker 1: I certainly can't pay her or him as much as
Speaker 1: they can make in the private sector, So increasingly they
Speaker 1: turn to for profit companies. And this is a field
Speaker 1: of healthcare that a lot of people have probably not
Speaker 1: heard about. I don't know if any of us heard
Speaker 1: about it beforehand. I certainly didn't. Correctional health care, so
Speaker 1: think of like blue Cross, Blue Shield, just for people
Speaker 1: in lock up. They pledge to deliver quality care, while
Speaker 1: very very attractive to administrators, containing cost. It's part of
Speaker 1: a trend that started back in the nineteen eighties during
Speaker 1: the Reagan administration, where the idea was that in general,
Speaker 1: we will start to privatize things. We as a country
Speaker 1: in general will privatize things because we'll be cutting the
Speaker 1: fat and having cost as the Having costs as the
Speaker 1: bottom line will encourage more nimbles, slimmed down and more
Speaker 1: efficient operations. This trend accelerated after the nineties, right when
Speaker 1: we had a ton of tough sentencing laws like mandatory
Speaker 1: sentencing and stuff. The Violent Crime Control Law Enforcement Act
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four made the number of people in jails
Speaker 1: and prisons jump from about three hundred thousand to more
Speaker 1: than two million today. Yeah so.
Speaker 3: According to a twenty eighteen study from the Pew Charitable Trusts,
Speaker 3: more than half of the states hire private companies to
Speaker 3: provide at least some of that prison healthcare services. Those
Speaker 3: prison healthcare services the companies they negotiate these multi year
Speaker 3: contracts with each jail and prison that they serve. Medical
Speaker 3: staff and prescription drugs, and outside services such as hospital stays,
Speaker 3: constitute the bulk the line to share of these costs. Oftentimes,
Speaker 3: the companies receive a per day, per individual rate, so
Speaker 3: profits depend on keeping costs below that amount. Sometimes contracts
Speaker 3: include provisions that increase a company's potential profit if it
Speaker 3: holds down transfers to hospitals or to other outside providers. Ben,
Speaker 3: can you help us unpack this because I don't know
Speaker 3: about you, but this seems a little on the shady side.
Speaker 1: For sure, your spider sense is correct. Sometimes this stuff
Speaker 1: can get lost in the legal language. But this is
Speaker 1: a very important turn in the story here. The companies,
Speaker 1: these private health providers for prisons have negotiated these things
Speaker 1: that say, look, we will make more money if everyone
Speaker 1: is and this is just for sake of argument. If
Speaker 1: everyone is limited to four hundred dollars a day, the
Speaker 1: medical care for all these inmates is four hundred dollars
Speaker 1: per person per day or less, and as probably is
Speaker 1: less than we will make another profit. Furthermore, if x
Speaker 1: number of people or less than that go to a
Speaker 1: hospital per year or to a specialist off site, then
Speaker 1: we'll make another We'll make another windfall, another bonus. So
Speaker 1: we know that private health insurance follows the same thing.
Speaker 1: It's not a new game, right. They want to avoid
Speaker 1: unnecessary tests and procedures. You probably hear that a lot
Speaker 1: back in the old death panel argument days. But this
Speaker 1: is very important. This means that if someone in jail
Speaker 1: or in prison believes that their health or even their
Speaker 1: life is in jeopardy. They can't do what any of
Speaker 1: us do. They can't just call nine to one one.
Speaker 1: They can't, you know, they can't play the great medical
Speaker 1: debt game that's killing this country and pay eleven grand
Speaker 1: for an ambulance over time. Instead, they have to hope
Speaker 1: and pray. If they are the religious type, that someone
Speaker 1: in the prison believes that they are exhibiting the signs
Speaker 1: of a stroke and they have to hope and pray
Speaker 1: that it's a minor stroke, or they have to hope
Speaker 1: and pray that the diabetes doesn't catch up to them
Speaker 1: and they get some help before they go into insulin shock.
Speaker 1: There are no comprehensive statistics about the prevalence of private
Speaker 1: healthcare companies in jail, and that makes sense because why
Speaker 1: would you want people to know that outside of maybe
Speaker 1: a trade show where you're pitching to a warden. There
Speaker 1: you go, well, we do have some stuff. We know
Speaker 1: that the National Commission on Correctional Healthcare has accredited these
Speaker 1: programs around the country, and seventy percent of the jails
Speaker 1: it inspects outsource their medical services and when they outsource.
Speaker 1: These for profit companies have a pretty big chunk of
Speaker 1: those contracts.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, So let's get into what we know about
Speaker 2: some of this stuff. Just it's gonna get even deeper
Speaker 2: and darker. After a quick word from our sponsor, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we've been talking in general terms about private companies, right,
Speaker 1: private healthcare companies. But let's name a few because we
Speaker 1: have some names.
Speaker 2: Right. So we've got at least one big one, and
Speaker 2: it used to be called Correct Care Solutions, and that's
Speaker 2: the one that I had heard of before, but it's
Speaker 2: now called well Path. And there's also Corizon Health. It
Speaker 2: looks like Horizon but with a C. Those are two
Speaker 2: of the bigger players.
Speaker 3: Is that like a kronat kind of Yeah?
Speaker 2: Okay, so it's on the horizon, but it's correction. It's
Speaker 2: the Correction Horizon of health.
Speaker 1: It used to be called Correctional Medical Services Incorporated, and
Speaker 1: then before that it was Prison Health Services Incorporated. Kind
Speaker 1: of like Backwater or Academi or EXE. Just changed up
Speaker 1: a little bit, Just change the names. It'll be fine,
Speaker 1: it'll be grand. What an adventure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's a reason why those names changed. Just
Speaker 2: like you said with Blackwater, well, with Blackwater, it was
Speaker 2: about public perception, right with some scandals that were occurring.
Speaker 2: When we say scandals, we mean pretty much murder that
Speaker 2: was occurring. With these companies, it's because they've been sued
Speaker 2: a lot. The two of them together combined have been
Speaker 2: sued about fifteen hundred times in the past past five years,
Speaker 2: and a lot of those were over, you know, accusations
Speaker 2: of things like neglect and malpractice and in dozens of
Speaker 2: cases even wrongful injury or up to death. Carizon, one
Speaker 2: of those companies, was the defendant in more than one
Speaker 2: thousand cases, so of those fifteen hundred.
Speaker 1: And it's interesting because Karison cares for about one hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty thousand people day to day. Well Passed, in contrast,
Speaker 1: handles about two hundred and fifty thousand people day to day. Wow.
Speaker 1: Representatives for both companies say, well, these lawsuits are often flimsy, frivolous,
Speaker 1: or inconclusive, and we know, you know again, people aren't
Speaker 1: in jail or prison for being on their best behavior.
Speaker 1: From what we understand, the vast majority of people are
Speaker 1: inmates are just trying to get through their time and
Speaker 1: get out and the other side of the bars gives
Speaker 1: us a different perspective. The prison guards can assure us
Speaker 1: that there are multiple people who do have mental health problems.
Speaker 1: You know, they're flinging pooh. Maybe there's some people malingering,
Speaker 1: which means faking an illness simply to change up their
Speaker 1: routine to get out somewhere, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But be that as it may, it doesn't negate the
Speaker 1: fact that these cases of wrongful injury or death have
Speaker 1: been decreed. Legitimate public interest lawyers have brought class action
Speaker 1: suits alleging inadequate healthcare across the entire system. There are multiple,
Speaker 1: multiple examples of this, unfortunately some which end in death.
Speaker 1: But we've got let's just do one example from Arizona.
Speaker 3: So in Arizona, civil rights groups filed a class action
Speaker 3: suit in twenty twelve. A year later, after the state
Speaker 3: passed legislation privatizing prison healthcare, it signed a contract with
Speaker 3: Coruson to provide medical services in those prisons. Then, in
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, a federal district court that sought to resolve
Speaker 3: the suit approved a settlement in which the state pledged
Speaker 3: to overhaul its care. But last June, Judge David Duncan
Speaker 3: found that quote, widespread and systematic failures remain end quote
Speaker 3: and held the state in contempt, issuing it fines of
Speaker 3: more than one million dollars.
Speaker 1: And that's interesting because when they're defending themselves, the private
Speaker 1: prison insurance companies will say that part of their contract
Speaker 1: indemnifies the state or you know, the party from the
Speaker 1: government that they're contracting with, indemnifies them from legal costs.
Speaker 1: But in the case of Arizona, the judge wasn't having
Speaker 1: it and essentially said, no, don't put this on them.
Speaker 1: You're the ones who agreed to let this happen. In
Speaker 1: the meantime, by the way, while these things are winding
Speaker 1: and wending through the court system, people are dying, you know,
Speaker 1: and many of whom committed crimes. But the ones who
Speaker 1: are dying were not sentenced to the death penalty. And
Speaker 1: the question then becomes, is this sentencing people to death?
Speaker 1: Which I know is a really messed up way to
Speaker 1: look at it, but it's not unfair. According to Steve Cole,
Speaker 1: a journalist wrote an excellent article for The New Yorker
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, evidence from cases across the country suggests
Speaker 1: that four decades of policy failures in both healthcare and
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform have left a largely neglected population vulnerable
Speaker 1: and at times at risk, and that for profit companies,
Speaker 1: which were promoted as a solution have instead become an
Speaker 1: integral part of a troubled system. They were supposed to
Speaker 1: fix it back in the eighties, and all they did
Speaker 1: was fix their profit margins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now it's become too big to fail in
Speaker 2: a way you can't really remove it.
Speaker 1: It even goes even goes down to the food, right,
Speaker 1: because we joke about food all the time. But food's
Speaker 1: part of your health.
Speaker 2: It's a massive part of your health. Yo, are what
Speaker 2: you eat, buddy, And it really is like the simplest
Speaker 2: thing to say that. My wife, My wife and I
Speaker 2: have an ongoing joke argument about that about how important
Speaker 2: your food is. She likes to eat a lot more
Speaker 2: healthy than I do. And I just like the good
Speaker 2: tasting stuff, you know, you know.
Speaker 1: Stuff that you evolved to seek out, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the sugar, salt, yeah, mostly the fats, like the bacons.
Speaker 3: You also like the heat, though, don't you.
Speaker 2: Man, Yeah, give me the spicy bacon.
Speaker 3: You're a spicy boy.
Speaker 2: I'm good to go. But yeah, it's just one of
Speaker 2: those things where it is true, if you're eating more
Speaker 2: healthy or getting more nutrients, you are in a better
Speaker 2: spot for all the other stuff and you're not going
Speaker 2: to have as many issues, at least theoretically. But we
Speaker 2: got a caller, someone a listener called in from Alabama
Speaker 2: and told us about this story where there was a
Speaker 2: local sheriff's office that was getting they would make money
Speaker 2: off the top of whatever money they didn't spend on
Speaker 2: food for the prison system within the county. And we
Speaker 2: haven't looked into it fully yet. We do have a
Speaker 2: story here from NPR about if sheriff in Alabama that
Speaker 2: the caller was mentioning he took almost a million dollars
Speaker 2: seven and fifty thousand dollars legally. He took this money
Speaker 2: to buy a beach house. Money that was meant to
Speaker 2: feed inmates within his county.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Atawa County, SHAREFF Todd intrickin Todd, if you're listening,
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy your beach house. What Todd did
Speaker 1: was pocket this, you know, seven hundred and fifty large
Speaker 1: that was supposed to feed inmates of the jail that
Speaker 1: he supervised. Then, according to the Birmingham News, he used
Speaker 1: the money that he pocketed or the majority of it
Speaker 1: to buy a beach house. Because Alabama has this law
Speaker 1: that allows sheriffs to quote keep and retain unspent money
Speaker 1: from jail food provision accounts. So sheriffs across the state
Speaker 1: of Alabama take the money as personal income.
Speaker 3: Like a bonus. Yeah, for like doing a good job,
Speaker 3: because they had like a surplus.
Speaker 1: Kind of Well, it's not attached to doing a good job.
Speaker 1: It's just a I mean, if the good job is
Speaker 1: defined as taking less money to feed people, then they
Speaker 1: can take it. There. It goes both ways, though. People
Speaker 1: are quick to point out if they have a shortfall
Speaker 1: in the budget in that regard, then the sheriff as
Speaker 1: an individual's personally held liable for covering the gap. But
Speaker 1: turns out that they don't really go out of their
Speaker 1: way to spend that much on feeding their inmates.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really depressing and messed up sheriff.
Speaker 1: Also, we don't know how many people are doing this,
Speaker 1: because sheriffs across the state apparently have done this for
Speaker 1: a long time. That law dates back to the Depression,
Speaker 1: and according to the Southern Center for Human Rights quote,
Speaker 1: it is presently unknown how much money sheriffs across the
Speaker 1: state have taken because most do not report it as
Speaker 1: income on state financial disclosure forms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're not required to specify any money that
Speaker 2: you take in in this way above two hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty thousand dollars a year. And he brought in seven
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty.
Speaker 1: We have to wonder what they're what they're eating.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It makes me think of do you guys remember the
Speaker 1: controversy of neutral loaf? Do you remember hearing about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I do. It was like a food substitute, kind
Speaker 3: of like soilent green.
Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of. It's like the the Okay, you know
Speaker 1: that there's meat loaf, there's neutral loaf, which is also
Speaker 1: called meal loaf because it is it's this unholy amalgamation
Speaker 1: of vegetables, fruit, meat, bread, other grains baked into a
Speaker 1: solid loaf. The ingredients vary, but there is something called
Speaker 1: dairy blend.
Speaker 3: Sounds like fruitcake to me, but.
Speaker 1: With fruitcake they at least keep the shape of the
Speaker 1: fruits right in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, they dice and kind of like also candied and
Speaker 3: gummy looking.
Speaker 1: But they're identifiably fruit, right. I see what you're saying.
Speaker 3: This is just like ground into a pulp into a
Speaker 3: paste and then that's baked into kind of this amalgam
Speaker 3: of god knows.
Speaker 1: What, right, yeah, oh god, And that one even went
Speaker 1: to court several times. In a case called Gordon versus Barnett,
Speaker 1: the District Court for the Western District of Washington ruled
Speaker 1: that someone got all the way to court arguing that
Speaker 1: eating neutral loaf was cruel and unusual punishment. And although
Speaker 1: the court ruled that it was not cruel and unusual,
Speaker 1: it was a punishment and that prisoners should be entitled
Speaker 1: to due process before they have to eat it. It's
Speaker 1: so bad that you have to get like the law
Speaker 1: involved for you to be forced to eat this, at
Speaker 1: least according to that judge.
Speaker 2: Geez, just a just to jump back in this, I'm
Speaker 2: reading a little bit further down in the article. It
Speaker 2: gives a little more context to this. So apparently this
Speaker 2: sheriff and how did we say it in and tracing
Speaker 2: entricn entrican.
Speaker 1: Like the demon, he's in Albata.
Speaker 2: Oh that's ooh, that's really cool. So yeah, so he's
Speaker 2: in Alabama's he's Entrican. So when he came into office,
Speaker 2: the previous sheriff died while he was in office. Okay,
Speaker 2: and this this money, this money that's meant for inmates
Speaker 2: for food, that account got drained and it was given
Speaker 2: to the family of that sheriff that just passed, and
Speaker 2: that was about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars or
Speaker 2: something to that effect. All that money was taken out.
Speaker 2: So then this current sheriff had to take out a
Speaker 2: personal loan one hundred and fifty thousand dollars just to
Speaker 2: keep the inmates fed. And he was paying off that
Speaker 2: for years and years and years. So it is interesting
Speaker 2: how the tides kind of turned with him having to
Speaker 2: take out this initial loan to him getting a beach
Speaker 2: you know, a beach house, and then ultimately owning property
Speaker 2: that's worth over one point seven million dollars through you know,
Speaker 2: all these various things that's he and his wife. And
Speaker 2: then also the fact that he makes about ninety three
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a year as the sheriff of a county,
Speaker 2: just base level, base level, and then he's able to
Speaker 2: make the bonus essentially on this one account that is
Speaker 2: directly tied to the food that would go to inmates.
Speaker 2: That is puzzling and strange, and I will never fully
Speaker 2: understand that.
Speaker 1: And it is legal, it is completely not against the law, yepet.
Speaker 1: So this this is such a brief look, but it
Speaker 1: leads us to the question what is to be done.
Speaker 1: The problem comes down to profit, but it also comes
Speaker 1: down to accountability. Right the healthcare providers say, you know, again,
Speaker 1: we take care of the legal cost in many cases.
Speaker 1: But also this is a ten billion plus dollar industry
Speaker 1: and those companies are obligated to seek profit on behalf
Speaker 1: of their owners. According to David Fothy, the director of
Speaker 1: the National Prison Project at the ACLU American Civil Liberties Union,
Speaker 1: these companies have compelling incentives to cut costs and staff,
Speaker 1: and that can result to denying care. And what is
Speaker 1: literally and I don't know if he was going for
Speaker 1: a pun here a captive market like they can't they
Speaker 1: cannot switch insurance providers, right, They can't say, well, this
Speaker 1: doctor stinks and they misdiagnosed my appendicitis and I almost died.
Speaker 1: I want someone else, and they'll say, no, sorry, you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to stick with this person for at least
Speaker 1: the next two to five years that you're locked up.
Speaker 1: And Fathi says, you know, he says, I don't mean
Speaker 1: to suggest that government run prison healthcare is perfect. It's
Speaker 1: often appallingly deficient. But at least when the government is
Speaker 1: providing the service, there's some measure of oversight, some measure
Speaker 1: of democratic control, and a lot of people may say, well,
Speaker 1: this is a rock and a hard place situation, because
Speaker 1: neither is particularly great for people incarcerated. But then there's
Speaker 1: something weird that we didn't talk about because of the
Speaker 1: way that the law changed to guarantee. For much of
Speaker 1: US history, the idea of prisoners receiving medical care was
Speaker 1: just like bonkers, why would you do that? You know
Speaker 1: what I mean. But as the law has changed, even
Speaker 1: though the prison system is terrible for people who are
Speaker 1: caught up in it, and even though it often increases
Speaker 1: a person's chances of committing a crime or recidivism, which
Speaker 1: is when they return to prison, inmates rights to healthcare
Speaker 1: have actually expanded in comparison to the public the inmates.
Speaker 1: The rulings that gave inmates a right to access to healthcare,
Speaker 1: at least on paper, have never been applied to free citizens.
Speaker 1: I want to say that one more time, inmates access
Speaker 1: to a doctor, to healthcare have been guaranteed in this country,
Speaker 1: at least on paper. If you are listening to this
Speaker 1: and you are not in prison, in that regard, the
Speaker 1: people incarcerated have more rights than you do.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. Yeah, Yeah, it makes you wonder. It makes
Speaker 2: you wonder if sometimes it would be a better move
Speaker 2: to do something to get incarcerated to get your health back.
Speaker 2: If you're in a tight enough spot. That's scary to
Speaker 2: think about. And I will have done that, That's what
Speaker 2: I'm saying. I know it has been done. There are
Speaker 2: specific examples, but just the fact that that is a
Speaker 2: situation you could find yourself in in this country is
Speaker 2: baffling and terrifying.
Speaker 3: And not even to mention that some people do it
Speaker 3: just for shelter, sometimes on purpose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it doesn't happen all the time, but people
Speaker 1: do go to jail on purpose. Some people go to
Speaker 1: bring in drugs from the outside one way or another,
Speaker 1: probably ingesting it somehow right and then passing it. In
Speaker 1: twenty twelve, a guy named Frank Morocco of Amherst, New York,
Speaker 1: was unable to afford healthcare for a rare form of leukemia.
Speaker 1: He was released from prison in twenty twelve. He had
Speaker 1: been in jail for twenty years on felony drug charges.
Speaker 1: So he's fifty six years old. So he went in
Speaker 1: when he was thirty six. He had leukemi. He had
Speaker 1: no way to pay for it. He had been incarcerated
Speaker 1: for so long that he walked into a grocery store,
Speaker 1: stepped up to the counter, just stole twenty three bucks
Speaker 1: worth of goods in plain sight so that the employees
Speaker 1: could see him, and then walked out. Got arrested on shoplifting,
Speaker 1: which violated his supervised release, and he was hoping it
Speaker 1: would land him back in prison so that he could
Speaker 1: get some help with his leukemia.
Speaker 2: Did it work.
Speaker 1: It was not reported whether Morocco got the treatment, but
Speaker 1: he was released from prison on the shoplifting charge in
Speaker 1: April of twenty thirteen.
Speaker 2: Wow, well, I guess I hope he did. But again,
Speaker 2: you know, this is such a tough topic because there really,
Speaker 2: there really is such a range of humanity that exists
Speaker 2: within the prison system, and just of you know, depending
Speaker 2: on your sense of morality, it really affects the way
Speaker 2: you're gonna feel about this. It really does. In the
Speaker 2: In the end, every single person in a prison everywhere
Speaker 2: is a human being that that, you know, and the
Speaker 2: best of times and the best of idealism, they deserve
Speaker 2: a shot at being healthy. But if that person has
Speaker 2: you know, heard another in one way, or you know,
Speaker 2: in one fashion or another, it's tough to it's tough
Speaker 2: to stomach the thought of them getting better healthcare than
Speaker 2: just someone who isn't doing so great financially outside of prison.
Speaker 2: This is a really tough topic.
Speaker 1: It is it is. Let's also, I mean, let's take
Speaker 1: a step further and say that one of the reasons
Speaker 1: the prison system in the US has so many problems
Speaker 1: is that it is not a program meant to rehabilitate
Speaker 1: people in along in many ways.
Speaker 2: Makes me think about that Sicko documentary from several years back.
Speaker 1: And we want to hear your take. Thank you for
Speaker 1: taking this strange journey with us. What role do you
Speaker 1: feel private, private medical care or private medical provider should
Speaker 1: play in the US prison system? Is this is this
Speaker 1: something that people incarcerated, you know, somehow deserve, you know?
Speaker 1: Is is that just part of the risk that they
Speaker 1: knowingly or unknowingly took when they committed a crime? How
Speaker 1: how would it be a I'm sure we have several
Speaker 1: people who are saying, right now, you know that I
Speaker 1: pay my taxes, I pay a lot right and I
Speaker 1: still struggle to pay my own medical bills. Why should
Speaker 1: this be better for someone else didn't, who didn't obey
Speaker 1: the rules of our land. And we don't want to
Speaker 1: say it's necessarily better because I think, as we've illustrated here,
Speaker 1: people are dying from easily preventable conditions in prison exactly.
Speaker 1: And that's our classic episode for this evening. We can't
Speaker 1: wait to hear your thoughts. We try to be easy
Speaker 1: to find online.
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