While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has received criticism nationwide, criminal justice reformers say affordable health care for ex-prisoners is an important component to criminal justice.
“One of the biggest pieces of justice reform in a generation was set in place by President Obama,” according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). According to Newsweek Magazine, there is no direct connection between the ACA, also known as Obamacare, and jails or prisons. However, “Obamacare stands to alleviate one of the most troubling aspects of incarceration—how ex-offenders, once released, receive affordable health care,” said the Magazine.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, to assist newly released inmates from San Francisco County Jail, last January, Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi introduced legislation to the Board of Supervisors that would make it standard protocol for the sheriff’s office to help inmates sign up for Obamacare.
“The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department will be one of the first county jail systems in the nation that’s officially designated to enroll inmates,” Mirkarimi said in a San Francisco Chronicle article.
Obamacare would save taxpayers millions of dollars by reducing the number of newly released people who receive treatment in emergency rooms, according to the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department.
“Enhancing access to integrated health care for the uninsured is not only a wise public health move, but it’s also wise public safety strategy,” Mirkarimi said in the Chronicle. “There is nexus between repeat incarceration and poor chronic health, especially people suffering with mental illness or substance addiction.”
According to the Chronicle, when inmates were released and needed medical or mental health care, they had to fend for themselves. Often, that process led them back to jail or prison, as they were unable to find affordable health care.
“Health care for former inmates should be viewed as a public safety issue”
Under Mirkarimi’s plan, the city will save about $2,500 per year for each inmate it enrolls, as county jail inmates are more likely to have chronic conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma and arthritis, as well as substance abuse and mental problems, according to the sheriff’s department.
“Health care for former inmates should be viewed as a public safety issue,” said Jeanne Woodford, former warden of San Quentin Prison and senior fellow at Berkeley’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy, in the Chronicle.
The U.S. has had an “epidemic of incarceration over the last four decades,” said Josiah Rich, professor of medicine and epidemiology at Brown University.
Rich said there is little argument over why the national prison population soared from a stable 200,000 inmates to over 2,000,000 in the past few decades. He said that President Ronald Reagan defunded federal mental health programs more than three decades ago and as a result, many people landed on the streets. Today, many of those make their beds in prisons and jails.
According to Rich, in the early 1980s, the number of inmates began to skyrocket as many of the patients were not treated, and were picked up by the criminal justice system.
“We just take them to the end of incarceration, and drop them off a cliff and say ‘good luck,’” Rich said in Newsweek. If all you have is a hammer, pretty soon, everything looks like a nail.