Lack of Health Care: Cruel and Unusual?

Perhaps the state of California will put those foreclosed houses in your neighborhood to good use. After all, the 57,000 prisoners the state was ordered to release to reduce overcrowding will have to live somewhere.

The special three-judge panel ordered their release Tuesday, finding in the inmates' favor in a lawsuit alleging the "California prison system had deprived them of a constitutional level of medical and health care." Yes, the conditions of the overcrowded prisons were deemed "cruel and unusual," giving the inmates constitutional grounds to sue for their freedom.

Excuse me, constitutional right to a certain level medical and health care? What gives convicted criminals the right to these services; services and a standard of care unknown to 40 million non-institutionalized Americans? This is a slippery-slope sort of situation. If prisoners are granted a constitutional right to mental and physical health care, then we should expect the uninsured among us to file suit to make the same claim soon enough.

I find it unconscionable for the government to provide a standard of care to prisoners that goes far beyond what non-criminals receive.