The Ethicacy of Providing Health Coverage for Inmates While The General Populace Is Offered None - Essay Example

In making a judgment and ethical decision concerning this issue, two prominent ethical standards can appropriately address them: the utilitarian approach and the rights approach. These two can collectively define and explain ethical elements in the subject and could fill the weaknesses posed by each other. Utilitarian approach is fundamental in expressing the view of the common good and in reaching the best possible compromise so that questions from both sides of the ethics divide can be effectively and justly resolved.

Meanwhile, the rights approach is important in arguing for and against healthcare for prisoners because the discussion is, after all, about the satisfaction of human/individual rights. This is significant because acts that respect rights are often universally accepted as ethical. The Ethical Issues The health care within the American prison system is not uniform because each of the federal and state prisons has its own health care delivery system. However, this does not dispel the fact that medical and health options are available to all prisoners regardless of the system of the prison health care system they belong.

Many people raise the point that healthcare for prisoners is unethical because it is expensive and takes a lot from the taxpayers’ money just so criminals can live a healthy life. To digress a little, this question effectively highlights the stakeholders involved in the debate – the prisoners, the authority, the general populace and the health care practitioner. But the argument is that they do not deserve such a care because they are serving their punishment in the first place. Here, bias is supposedly a given since convicted criminals are being deprived of certain rights as part of their penalty and rehabilitation.

This point is, of course, valid. Beginning in the 1980s, the rising population in the prisons has significantly claimed a significant share of many states’ budgets. According to a study by Maddow (2001), the US health care prison cost have dramatically risen at a faster rate than the rest of the correctional costs and that today prison officials are beset by rising numbers of expensive illnesses such as HIV/AIDS as well as the ever-present threat of Eighth Amendment lawsuits. (p. 191) Two points are being emphasized by critics: one, criminals do not deserve healthcare; and, secondly, they are not paying for the care services.

These points sometimes also cloud the health care providers’ judgments. There are instances wherein bias sets in and appropriate and sufficient medical services are withheld. But this is not entirely surprising. One, for instance, can consider the case cited by Gaines and Miller (2010) summarized below: A prisoner, who was convicted for fourteen years because of robbery, has been hospitalized due to his heart ailment. The doctors declared that if the patient did not undergo heart transplant, he would die.

Now, the state’s Department of Corrections have to deal with not only with spending more than $1 million in order to pay for the medical expenses but that it also had to muscle its way in having the prisoner prioritized from among the 4,100 names that are in the national waiting list for a new heart. (p. 499) The above case underscored the