Lawsuits dog company providing medical care in prisons

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/local/lawsuits-dog-company-providing-medical-care-in-gwi/nbYXz/

Oct. 25, 2013
By Dan Klepal
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Anjoure Teele was pregnant in January 2011 when she was booked into the Gwinnett County jail for armed robbery. One month later, she had a miscarriage in the back seat of a Sheriff’s patrol car en route to the hospital, with her wrists handcuffed and shackled to her waist.

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From the print version:
She had a miscarriage in the back seat of a sheriff's patrol car en route to the hospital, with her wrists handcuffed and shackled to her waist. Teele's fetus, 18 weeks in gestation, was pronounced dead on arrival at Emory Eastside Hospital in Snellville.
Teele is in the midst of a wrongful death lawsuit file in 2011 against the Gwinnett County jail's medical provider, Corizon Health, which has had similar claims of malpractice made against it in jails and prisons all over the country.
Upon arrival at the hospital, Teele told Deputy Thomas Maloy that her baby had been born & was in her jumpsuit and that her shackles were too tight. Maloy ordered her out of the car, forced her to sit in a wheelchair.

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One of the many articles I found in searching for more info on the company:

http://www.lawton911.com/larry/is-corizon-health-care-which-merged-with-prison-health-services-killing-inmates-and-costing-you-money-yes-read-on/

Is Corizon Health Care which merged with Prison Health Services killing inmates and costing YOU money? Yes! Read on……

Prison health care is a touchy subject because the person getting treatment is a person who committed a crime. Let’s put the 8th Amendment – Cruel and Unusual Punishment – aside for a second and address prison health care in general. Prison health care has become a huge business and when companies who get the contracts to provide inmate care cut costs to beef up their bottom line the taxpayers eventually pay.

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Here is how YOU lose. When an inmate gets out of prison and has aliments that could have been easily taken care while he was incarcerated it costs the taxpayers. The person getting out usually has no health care and he gets medicaid. You pay that cost. In essence, you are paying for the profits of private health care companies, because the private company should have taken care of the minor issue, but instead cut costs to beef up their bottom line.

The cases below are sad. Settlements to the families of inmates who are abused and mistreated by a corrupt system are miniscule compared to the profits these companies make.

Aleshia Napier was 18 years old in 2006 when she hung herself with a bed sheet at the Broward Correctional Institution in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., after being placed in solitary confinement despite her diagnosis of clinical depression and bipolar disorder.

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“My main concern is the profit motive taking precedence over patient care,” said Berg, who has taken out more than ten lawsuits against private health care companies. “The second one is that once the government entity contracts with the private provider, the government entity doesn’t provide any oversight.”

Prison Health Service (PHS) got its largest contract ever in 2000, $253 million for three years, from New York City after both Florida and Pennsylvania began official investigations of PHS into treatment of those states’ inmates. At the same time it received the contract, PHS was paying millions in legal fees.

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cases like that of Ashley Ellis, who died in a PHS-run facility in Vermont from a lack of a vitamin that could be bought over the counter, all the more sad. Ellis, 23, died three days into her 30-day sentence. PHS did not have potassium in stock at the prison, and during Ellis’ stay, there was no doctor on staff and only one registered nurse, during just one shift.

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