Former UTMB President John D. Stobo wrote to the New York Times and said that "his experience" suggests that folks can cut the cost of prison care and still have plump, healthy little inmates. Please see an excerpt from Stobo's letter, which the NYT tagged with the title "Letter - The Cost of Prisons, in California and Texas":
In “Spineless in California” (editorial, Jan. 8), you criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposal to generate much-needed money for California’s public universities by cutting prison costs, arguing that it would be “impossible” to shrink the prison budget without shrinking the inmate population. My experience suggests otherwise.
This letter from Stobo is rather astonishing, given the Dallas County inmate care disaster he presided over 3 or 4 years ago. Here's an excerpt from the Dallas Observer's story titled "Fed up Feds":
The report focused largely on the record of the jail's former medical provider, the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (UTMB). Parkland Memorial Hospital didn't take over the medical care until last March, after the Justice Department began its investigation, and is largely being credited for improving certain practices. Still, the Justice Department's investigators exposed the jail's long record of incompetence, in which basic practices of medicine are typically ignored at grave risk to sick inmates. On the first day investigators toured the jail this past February, when UTMB's medical staff would be expected to be on their best behavior, many inmates failed to receive their medications. The Justice Department would conclude this was not exactly a one-time event.
It is no wonder UTMB managed to cut health care costs, eh? Apparently, UTMB cut a few lives in the process, as well. When the lawsuits started flying, Stobo's UTMB pulled up stakes, retreated to Galveston, and declared sovereign immunity, leaving Dallas County, which UTMB promised to indemnify, holding the legal bag. An excerpt from another Dallas Observer story titled "Paying the Piper":
After the investigation, the county expected UTMB to pay for at least some of the costs stemming from Mims' lawsuit. In its 2002 contract with the county, the medical school agreed to "indemnify" the county in the event of any lawsuit stemming from their own mistakes. Allen Clemson, the administrator for the county and its top non-elected official, negotiated the contract and in a subsequent affidavit said that he thought UTMB agreed to be on the hook in the event of a case such as Mims'. But UTMB would later claim "sovereign immunity," which means that as a governmental entity, it is protected from most lawsuits. In other words, the indemnity clause to which UTMB agreed might as well have been worthless. Both Clemson and the District Attorney's Office, which also reviewed the contract, basically got duped by a medical school into thinking that they had some protection in such a case as Mims'.
Yep, with all that imported Texas "talent," California can expect much the same results.
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