Prison Medicine Just as Bad as it was Decades Ago

The only way to get medical attention seems to be to set yourself on fire or to take some other extreme action.

I have written many times about medical care, or the lack thereof, in US prisons. In my 23 months at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) at Loretto, Pennsylvania, three prisoners died of cancer simply because they were refused treatment. I’m talking about preventable cancers. The go-to in every prison’s clinic is to give Tylenol no matter what the prisoner’s complaint is. But Tylenol doesn’t do much to treat cancer.

Getting appropriate medications in prison isn’t the only problem. Getting actual care is an even bigger one. Just weeks after I arrived at FCI Loretto in February 2013, the prison physician resigned because he was not allowed to prescribe to prisoners the medicines that he believed were necessary. He left on principle. But after six months with no doctor on staff or on call, he was finally replaced by a disgraced pediatrician who had been suspended for taking “inappropriate liberties” with a child. He had lost his license to practice medicine in Ohio, so why not put him in a prison in Pennsylvania? After all, there was no impediment to practicing in Pennsylvania because he had not been accused of having committed a crime there.