The Columbus Dispatch
In his Friday letter “Inmates have pretty good health care,” Steve Fedan seems to be comparing apples and oranges.
Collect-call phone rates affect primarily the families of prisoners, who foot the bill.
Health-care and medicine costs affect the prisoner directly. Ohio prisoners pay $2 per sick call, comparable to a co-pay, and even $2 can deter someone from seeking medical help until he is seriously ill, since most prisoners subsist on only $18 per month job pay.
Ohio legislators have not increased prisoner pay in more than 20 years, although commissary prices keep rising.
And now that the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction no longer pays for over-the-counter drugs, inmates have to come up with payment or do without.
Metamucil, used for cholesterol control as well as fiber, runs $7 a jar. Ibuprofen costs about $3 for 200 mg, but if an inmate’s prescription is for 800 mg, that’s four tablets per day. Costs soon get out of hand.
Like some senior citizens who choose between their meds and food each month, many prisoners must choose between their meds and hygiene items. And how many patients out in the free world have to wait in the cold or rain at pill call?
Copyright 2013 The Columbus Dispatch