Today in Disgusting: Getting Rich By Locking Up Grandpa

[damnedifIknow]

Well, that didn’t take long. Within just a few months of Kentucky cutting its ties with the country’s biggest for-profit prison company, the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) has hit back with its latest sinister scheme to turn tax dollars (and human misery) into shareholder returns."

Here’s the plan: rather than letting one of the company’s prisons in Kentucky sit empty, a CCA ally in Kentucky’s legislature has announced plans to re-fill it by incarcerating the old and infirm."

*Has CCA suddenly decided it really cares about the elderly? Not quite. It cares about profits, as it always has, and this provision would create a new way for CCA to bolster its bottom line. If the federal government reimburses the private prison company for its medical expenses through Medicaid, it will convert old people into an attractive revenue stream for CCA. By recharacterizing this geriatric prison as an “assisted living and/or nursing facility,” CCA can receive the same Medicaid reimbursement as a nursing home or hospital in the community—and be paid a per-diem rate by the Kentucky Corrections Department on top of that."

https://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights/today-disgusting-getting-rich-locking-grandpa

[Marie Marie]

1. Maybe Mitch McConnell could be their first "guest".

He's old enough and believes in unregulated free market enterprises so he would make a perfect candidate in this latest for-profit scheme.

[Electric Monk]

2. There was a thread about this yesterday, with 33 recs and counting

here http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024671903
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/03/15-3


Worth posting again, though, imho.

[bluesbassman]

3. With the core of Capitalism being "buy low-sell high", what could possible go wrong?

Corporations are intrinsically incapable of "caring" for people. At best this will be wharehousing.