SPOTLIGHT: California inmate release may send indigents to hospitals

With riots going on in Avenal State Prison right now, we're INCREASING the numbers who need to go to the hospital. This is CRAZY. The citizens of California need to stand up and scream "STOP"... The crowding and punitive treatment of the prisoners is embarrassing to us. The rest of the nation looks at CA and mocks us. Get the old and infirm prisoners to alternative housing, get adequate health care to the prisoners who need it. We consider it inhumane to kick a dog, yet we do it daily (in the attitudes of the guards) to the prisoners.
The inmates moved to other prisons from the Chino riot are being deprived of access to enough food, the law library, and forms to appeal their treatment.

Inmates are treated at regular hospitals frequently. No one is benefitting from billions being spent to pay guards with no medical training to stand over prisoners who can't even move. Prisoners are us, our friends and family members, not some "other" - what an ignorant article this is...we are spending $40 mil a month in guard overtime alone.

Since recently-released prisoners, regardless of their age or health, are most likely very low income or no income at all individuals, why are they not immediately covered by their state's medicaid program? Most will undoubtedly be on some form of income assistance such as welfare anyway. I don't understand the stated problem that there will be no third party available to pay for their medical care. Indigent, elderly, single adults with virtually no income - at least here in New Jersey, with the highest property taxes in the nation, and I am sure in the state of California, which has bankrupted itself by trying to pay the medical expenses of its expanding dependent population, such individuals should certainly be eligible for Medicaid.

Even as they genuflect towards Big Pharma and the private, for-profit healthcare monopolies, our elected representatives in Washington appear to accept the need for federal support of state programs geared towards the indigent population.