The ultimate irony: the only place where health care is truly a right in America is in our prisons.
I'm certain this does not make the sick, disabled, elderly and poor people who are victims of Governor Bredesen's Health Care Axe feel any better.
For the many who are about to lose TennCare, surely this is the ultimate slap in the face.
But if all else fails, they might consider getting arrested, eh Governor?
Pictures here - Warning: Scary deathly-ill senior citizen criminals
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The shrunken 82-year-old changes from her pajamas and pink house coat into jeans and a denim shirt labeled California Prisoner and begins her drill: breakfast at 6, sack lunch pickup at 6:30, infirmary at 7, where she acquires an ankle chain, belly chains and handcuffs.
She then hobbles to a van for the 40-minute ride to Riverside Hospital for dialysis beginning at 8. Helen Loheac suffers from chronic renal failure, a condition that she figures costs the state $436,000 a year, not counting the two $24.75-an-hour armed corrections officers who guard her, all 5 feet and 90 pounds, for up to eight hours a day three times a week.
The financial toll of incarcerating senior citizens nationwide is staggering. Eyeglasses, hearing aids, medications and therapies, often for chronic or terminal conditions, compound the $30,929 annual average tab for housing a young, robust prisoner.
Now 72, Parker is serving 15-to-life for murdering a man who he believed was having an affair with his wife. His time in prison, 20 years and counting, has not been easy on him—or on taxpayers. So far, doctors have treated Parker for three strokes and two heart attacks. His surgeries include heart bypass, knee replacement and cataract, which left him blind in one eye.
Parker gulps down 15 pills a day. He has been denied both parole and compassionate release while racking up, by his count, more than $1 million in treatment. If he were released, Parker says he would return to his home in Northern California and let the federal Veterans Administration pick up his medical bills. "I can't blame anybody but myself for being here," he says. "I don't want to be a burden to no one. Who in the world am I going to hurt, an old, crippled man like me?"
Eighty-year-old Claude Hoffman, sits on a bed covered with a patchwork quilt handmade by the ladies of Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in nearby Vacaville and watches a small TV. Though most inmates in the eight-cell unit pass away within a few months, he arrived more than a year ago ready to die of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. His stay, not including medications, costs the state $1,500 a week, three times as much as a healthy prisoner.
Hoffman was sentenced to 15-to-life for killing his girlfriend about 18 years ago, an act he committed while drunk. Now a born-again Christian, he spends most of his time writing to and about Jesus: "Every day I ask Christ our Lord to take me off the state rolls and let me go home to die," he whispers, using his inhaler to draw a breath. . .
Tip of the hat to Talkleft
