Even prison walls can’t keep out the soaring healthcare costs.
A new report from the State Health Care Spending Project, part of The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, found that state prisons spent some $6.5 billion on healthcare for inmates in 2008, up from $4.2 billion in 2001.
Per-inmate spending grew in 35 of the 44 states studied, with a median growth rate of 32 percent over the seven-year period, Pew reported.
A few other general U.S. healthcare trends are playing out in the prison systems too. For one, their populations are growing increasingly older. While the overall inmate population went up 15 percent between 2001 and 2008, the number of state and federal inmates age 55 and older nearly doubled. That’s part of the problem, as these senior prisoners are more likely to have chronic medical and mental conditions that require expensive treatment or training for staff. Meanwhile, prisons also see high rates of infectious disease and mental illness.
“Health care is consuming a growing share of state budgets, and corrections departments are not immune to this trend,” said Maria Schiff, director of the State Health Care Spending Project, in a statement.
Because costs are growing so fast, many systems have gotten creative with how they deliver healthcare. Some states like Texas and Colorado are embracing telemedicine in the form of video conferencing and digitally transmitted diagnostic data. Other states like Florida have outsourced prison healthcare to private vendors. Yet others are using medical parole to shed prisoners deemed too sick to pose a public safety risk.
Another option some states are exploring is enrolling prisoners in Medicaid and shifting some of those expenses to the federal government. As 25 states and the District of Columbia have said they will expand their Medicaid programs, this could become a more prevalent strategy moving forward.
