The Affordable Care Act now provides health care for low-income adults without children, including the approximately 300,000 who leave prison this year. Marketplace Dan Gorenstein looked at how former inmates may - or may not be - helped by this new development. As you know, most people in prison have very high ACE scores; developing a trauma-informed system to assist them is critical.
“There has been nothing in my career that has been this exciting as this moment,” says Dr. Emily Wang, a primary care physician who teaches at Yale Medical School and treats former inmates.
Wang has seen that simple access to care – particularly for substance abuse or mental health – can help ex-cons find their footing. And save money in part because this patient population is so expensive to treat.
“Individuals that are released from prison, they are 12 times more likely to die even in the first two weeks following release," she says. "They are more likely to be hospitalized, they are more likely to go to the emergency department.”
Wang says about 85 percent of prisoners have some kind of health problem.
This helps explain why a large chunk of prison budgets goes towards healthcare, running into the billions every year. New York state spends about $74 million dollars annually just on medications.
But making sure former inmates get health care is an issue...
“Nobody is really responsible, no agency, for what happens to ex-offenders when they leave,” says Donna Strugar-Fritsch, a prison consultant with Health Management Associates, who works with local governments.
Strugar-Fritsch says many states are still putting systems in place to simply make sure inmates walk out of prison with Medicaid cards. And even for those who are insured, there is a shortage of treatment programs for substance abuse and mental illness.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/health-care/prison-you-get-health-care-when-youre-released
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