For-Profit Prison Healthcare Harms Vermonters

The state of Vermont does not have capital punishment, yet David Mitchell, an incarcerated Vermonter died gasping for air. 28 VSA 801 states: a)The Department shall provide health care for inmates in accordance with the prevailing medical standards. Sadly, David Mitchell, 46 at the time, was not the recipient of the care our law mandates; instead, he received the death penalty.

Our state sadly enters into contracts with out-of-state for-profit healthcare providers. Vitalcore employees, under the guidance of the mother ship, willfully engage in negligent care for incarcerated inmates throughout our country. Their goal is to make money, and they do so off the backs of our most unempowered and silenced population in all the land: the incarcerated.

Wellpath LLC, owned by a private equity firm, is at the helm of negligent incarcerative care right now. Our state willingly pays them $33 million a year to take care of 1300 of our fellow Vermonters. If a healthcare provider or nurse dares to speak out about the standard of care, whoosh, they are fired on the spot. Ask Louise Walker RN. Or ask Dr. Zazzali, who is in the news right now, about Vitalcore using his hard-earned MD signature to perpetrate their minimal bare shred thread of health care.

Check the DOC website and you will find that they are still claiming to follow the National Commission on Health Care Standards for prisons. Oh, what date is that manual, 2014? My how time flies when incarcerative “healthcare” is just a check mark in a box.

My advocacy group, Vermont Just Justice has appeared before the House Institutions and Corrections Committee with live testimony from the recipients of both of these for profit health care companies. They have heard the experiences of enough Vermonters to believe that this care is substandard, dangerous and uncaring. (See the testimonials we gathered from affected people here.) The Hippocratic oath of “first do no harm” is actually practiced as “first do nothing that costs money” followed by “first do nothing.”Our legislature is aware our inmates are not getting what the law mandates. They too, do nothing. For if they really wanted to change the every three year for profit healthcare cycle they could do the following:

We presented the idea to the House Institutions and Corrections Committee to begin to build our own incarcerative healthcare infrastructure. We have two major medical centers with medical schools in close proximity to our prisons, we have nursing schools as well. We could put that $33 million a year toward creating a system that keeps money in our state, and could in fact recruit future medical students, nurses, nurse practitioners, and physician’s assistants who may be interested in correctional healthcare as a career.

Rhode Island is similar in size and they have done just this. Why are we throwing millions of dollars out the door to a for profit LLC who has little to no interest in healthcare? LLCs are created as low-risk, high-profit-margin entities for investors. Is that the healthcare model dedicated to the prevailing standard of care?
Perhaps if Vitalcore had been as committed to treating a 46-year-old who deteriorated from the day he arrived at the DOC as they are to making profit through willful negligence, our incarcerated population would maintain their health and upon release be able to be healthy productive members of society, instead of a shell of what they once were.

Time to take back our healthcare for the incarcerated, and prevent another untimely death. Time to say no to profit over healthcare. Wealthy LLC investors should not add another yacht to their fleet by being complicit in a scheme that denies healthcare.

A prison sentence in Vermont should not be the death penalty. I am calling on the legislature to take back prison healthcare!

— Leslie Thorsen, RN

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