This is worth reading, only in this country and I live in Ohio. Are we smart, or what?
COLUMBUS -- Lawrence Reynolds overdosed on pills March 7.
The Ohio State Penitentiary inmate was rushed to a Youngstown hospital. After nine days and thousands of dollars' worth of care, he was taken to Lucasville -- and executed.
You paid for the whole process, from his 24-hour surveillance when he took the pills to his hospital stay to his lethal injection.
While the circumstances were unique, the fact Reynolds received extensive health care behind bars was not.
Although universal health care for Americans is a hot topic for debate, it's a given for the 50,783 inmates in Ohio's state prison system.
Ohioans spent $212.5 million on inmate health care last year, according to data from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. The state spent an additional $68.9 million for inmate mental health and $9.3 million for drug and alcohol recovery.
That amounts to $5,726 per inmate in 2009, up 37 percent from $4,175 per inmate in 2001.
Put another way, last year's bill equaled $25 in out-of-pocket costs from every Ohioan.
Without reforms, this financial obligation will keep growing as medical costs continue to rise and more felons are sentenced to longer terms without parole.
State officials are considering some solutions, including parole arrangements that would shift costs to the federal Medicare program. And nobody yet knows how the proposed changes in federal health care could affect state prison costs.
Under 24 hour surveillance and he still managed to get the pills and take them. Why don't we have clever people like him in government? If nothing else he could have had his own TV show and done Street Magic, he must have been good at it. I wonder if ANYONE at ANYTIME thought, "Well, he is going to be execucted in a few days, he apparently wants to die, so, well .......???"
