Doin’ Time With a New Ticker
When my parents got dumped by their medical insurance company and found that a new plan was going to cost at least twice as much, they asked my two cents’ worth. My dad has a heart condition, so I told him they ought to lay out some cash and get the best plan available.
Now I realize it was bad advice. I should have told them to get a couple of Saturday night specials and start knocking off convenience stores.
A California convict, serving time for a 1996 robbery in Los Angeles, got a heart transplant on Jan. 3 at Stanford Medical Center. A story by the Times’ Mitchell Landsberg reported that the bill will come to as much as $1 million. But the patient didn’t have Blue Cross, so you and I will be covering the tab.
Now I’m not someone who will argue that prisoners surrender all rights the moment the door slams shut. People often tell me they’re appalled that inmates have televisions or ball fields, and I can’t get worked up about it. I’ve been on the inside of enough prisons to know there are no holidays there. What appalls me is that a huge percentage of the prison population is doing time for simple drug addiction, essentially, while deep-pocketed execs from the likes of Enron and Arthur Andersen pillage and plunder and still walk the streets.
But getting back to the crooks who are actually behind bars, the question is whether they should get taken care of when they’re sick, even if treatment is complicated and expensive. And the answer is yes. They’re still citizens, and more important, they’re human beings. The law doesn’t offer a choice in the matter, anyway.
But should it be the best care available when you and I are the ones paying? Do we really want to make that kind of top-shelf investment in the future of somebody who lives on a cell block?
My dad worked his entire life, has not been in jail that I know of, and pays a growing chunk of his fixed income on health care. The only time he’s been to Stanford is to see a football game. He’s been having a rough time lately because his doctors, forced by insurance company bean counters to practice cut-rate, assembly-line medicine, failed to treat him for a condition that was diagnosed two years ago. A convict, meanwhile, is being fussed over at one of the finest hospitals in the world, and my dad is paying for it.
According to Landsberg’s story, the average heart transplant costs $209,000, plus $15,000 a year for follow-up treatment. That being the case, it’s not clear to me why this guy got the Cadillac of heart transplants. Did state prison officials shop around at all? Have they heard of priceline.com? Did it have to be Stanford?
When I first heard about it, I wondered how this con managed to get to the top of the waiting list. You don’t just show up at the hospital, have them zip you open, and go home with a new heart. You’ve got to get your name on a list and wait your turn, and for some people, that turn doesn’t come in time. A lot of factors are taken into account, such as the location of the donor heart, the location of the recipient, the degree of illness, and other compatibility factors.
On the day this 31-year-old, two-time felon hit the jackpot, there were 4,119 people in this country waiting for a new heart that might save their lives. You have to wonder if a law-abiding, tax-paying citizen drew one last breath while Jailhouse Joe was getting a second wind.
A person’s moral standing ought to be irrelevant, a bioethicist argued in Landsberg’s story. “Should merit be considered a criteria?” she asked skeptically. “Should organs go to people who are ‘good,’ who have lived good lives?”
Let me put it this way:
Yes.
When it comes to organ transplants, we’re already playing God to a certain degree, extending life beyond its natural course. I’m not saying a prison inmate should never receive a life-saving medical procedure. But when a fresh donor heart is on ice and the choice is between a two-time loser or someone who doesn’t wear a jumpsuit every day, I don’t have a problem giving extra points to the latter.
Before his transplant, the inmate had applied for a so-called compassionate release because of his condition. He might still get one, because even though he’s got a new pump, he may be classified as terminally ill. Taking up a life of crime could be the smartest thing this guy ever did.
I’ve got to talk to my parents.
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Steve Lopez writes Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes .com.
