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"The Pennsylvania Department of Corruption"
Recently the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections in conjunction with P.H.S., Prison Health Services, the privatized statewide heath care provide for the PA DOC, based out of Brentwood, Tennessee made it much more difficult for prisoners to get medical treatment by increasing the co-payment for medical services to $5.00! A fee of $5.00 will be assessed each time a medical service at sick call is provided to a prisoner by a person licensed to provide health care under the laws of the Common wealth of Pennsylvania! Also an additional fee of $5.00 will be charged for each subscription that is ordered for the prisoner by an on-site health care professional. NO complementary services will be given to prisoners with the exception of prisoners with well documental chronic care issues like HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, hypertension and diabetes. With the average wage paid for a prison work assignment here in Pennsylvania of 19ยข an hour and four hours max a day, many prisoners are letting their illnesses go untreated. Prisoners are unable to pay for medical services and buy bare necessities like toothpaste, deodorant and shampoo form the commissary. Frequently prisoners are deliberately given medication prescriptions that do not improve or fully restore them back to good health. Under DOC policy DC-820 there should be no additional fee when this takes place, however a prisoner still must sign out and sign a DC-138 cash slip for follow-up sick call visits. These signed cash slips are forwarded to the facility business office for fee deduction from the prisoners account. The prisoner can try to recoup these deductions by using the grievance system. The odds are very small that the fee will ever be credited back to the prisoners account. This is just one of the many ways the Executive Administration of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections manipulate the prison population into handing back over the "slave wages" they worked all month for. |