Funding for Health Care Services in California Prisons

One of today's big news items is the Governor's signing of the California budget. The adoption of the state budget seems to have refueled a dispute between California Health Care Services (Receiver J. Clark Kelso) and California government executives.

Although a Receivership of California's prison health care services was established back in 2005, friction between the parties became particularly apparent in August of 2008 when Receiver J. Clark Kelso filed a motion to compel the state to begin funding the $7.9 billion needed for the extensive reform of California's prison medical system. You can read the motion and supporting documents here (look for 8/13/08 date).

In response to the motion, State Controller John Chiang issued this statement. Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. also responded to the motion by filing his own motion in opposition.

In support of his motion, Attorney General Brown references the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA). The PLRA was passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 and signed into law as Title VIII in Public Law 104-134 (see page 67 in the PDF). The PLRA is also referenced in the full report issued by the Legislative Analyst's Office "Update of the California Prison Receivership: 2007".

For more background information on the Receivership, take a look at the website of the California Prison Health Care Services and their collection of documents related to the case of Plata v. Shwarzenegger. You can also look at the Receiver's reports on the status of the California prison medical system. For a point of comparison to these reports, you can look at a 1998 report by the California Research Bureau "Health Care in California State Prisons."

January 2009 Update:

"Improper" spending-

A recent report by the State Auditor concludes, "staff at Prison Health Services ignored state contracting laws, as well as the alternative contracting requirements established by a federal court, when it acquired $26.7 million in IT goods and services in a noncompetitive manner..."