In the mid 1990s, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections privatized its free state healthcare sector by contracting with Wexford Corporation to provide for-profit healthcare to prisoners. Since then, Wexford Corporation has received about $2 billion in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections healthcare contracts for providing inadequate medical treatment to prisoners. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has handed its entire healthcare sector to Wexford Corporation without any accountability, transparency and performance ratings attached, thereby giving Wexford the green light to do as they will with prisoners’ healthcare. Consequently, Wexford Corporation has placed the accumulation of profits over incarcerated citizens’ health by providing inadequate medical treatment to prisoners.
To increase its profits, Wexford Corporation has a policy of considering Motrin as a miracle drug, thereby treating every prisoner’s medical condition or illness with a Motrin pill and causing lethal conditions. At every state correctional institution within the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, when a prisoner gets sick, the prisoner must go to the prison’s infirmary to be examined by physician assistant at sick call. At sick call, no matter the illness a prisoner complains of or exhibits, the prisoner is always prescribed a Motrin pill as the medical treatment. Catch the flu and you’re given a Motrin. Coughing up blood? You’re given a Motrin. Sinus infection? “Here, have a Motrin.” Got a hernia? “Here’s a Motrin.” Having blurred vision? “Here, take a Motrin and see me in the morning.”
This is not healthcare for prisoners. It is death care for prisoners. Inadequate medical treatment occurs in many other ways in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, but providing Motrin for every prisoner’s illness is Wexford Corporation’s standard care for prisoners, which is their capitalist way of reducing the cost of health services to prisoners to increase their profit margins. We have a name for entities like Wexford Corporation and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections: Bloodsuckers. From the belly of the beast, this is Shakaboona. Thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
