California proposes $7 billion for prison healthcare
Schwarzenegger administration says the plan would bring care up 'to a constitutionally adequate level.' The amount is nearly triple what had been previously proposed.
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration today proposed $7 billion in state spending to bring health care in state prisons up to constitutional standards.
The plan includes $6 billion to design and construct new health facilities and housing for 10,000 inmates with medical or mental health needs; and $1 billion to improve existing health care facilities at state prisons.
That spending, most of which would require borrowing, nearly triples the $2.5 billion the governor had proposed in his budget submitted to lawmakers in January.
Since that time, new federal receiver Clark Kelso has been surveying the state's prison system and determining what he believes is needed.
"We believe that this proposal will provide the necessary funding to implement a thorough, comprehensive plan by the receiver to achieve what both he and the governor want to accomplish," said H.D. Palmer, a spokesman for the state Department of Finance. "And that is to get health care in the state's correctional system to a constitutionally adequate level of care."
The plan comes at a difficult time for the state, which faces a budget gap for next year that state officials now project at $7.5 billion in the wake of reduction measures that lawmakers and the governor took in January.
U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson created the receivership and gave it broad and independent power as part of an ongoing court case, in which he ruled that prison medical conditions were so poor that they violated prisoners' rights.
Henderson had criticized the state for overseeing a system that was so broken that an inmate was dying every six or seven days because of inadequate care.
michael.rothman@latimes.com
