This is just plain fucking dumb and stupid
http://www.gastongazette.com/news/bank-58397-richard-hailed.html
sad thing is this is actually fairly common now. just alot of people dont view it as goign stright for the healthcare. You rob someone and get away with it, you're rich. You get busted and go to prison, you're caught but hey, you aren't homeless starving and sick anymore.
This some fucked up shit.
This is a perfect example of how the system doesn't work, abused because health care in jail is better then out of jail.
Same issue with drugs and the war on drugs, rather then spending our tax money on putting addicts into for-profit jails and prisons, we should be spending the money on helping people and getting them help to get off drugs. I know people will say i'm crazy for saying it, but there are contries that have de-criminalized drugs and instead of going to jail, you have to do mandetory rehab and stay on a program and get help... and guess what, it costs less then putting someone in jail
I'm a left wing Canadian IRL, which means that I'm pretty much to the left of Stalin (not really), so take what I have to say with a giant American-sized grain of salt, but:
Right now, about 0.743% of America is in prison. It's the highest per capita rate in the world. Russia has the second highest incarcation rate, at 0.577% of the population. Look at the other first world countries: the UK has a 0.15% incarceration rate, Australia is at 0.133%, Canada is at 0.117%, France is at 0.096%, the Netherlands is at 0.094%, Germany at 0.088%, Norway at 0.071%, Japan at 0.062%. All of the countries I've named also have lower rates of violent crime.
Putting people in prison is obviously necessary in some cases. There are people that deserve to be in prison for one reason or another, to keep our streets safe and to punish people for wrongdoing. I'm not disputing that in the slightest. But, consider this: if the US were to release 75% of its inmates (which would lower prison population rates in the US to a point where they would [i]still[/i] be significantly higher than those in most other first world nations), it would free 0.5% of the US population. Now, consider the money it's costing the US on a yearly basis to keep one in two hundred people behind bars. That's a lot of tax dollars at work.
Next, considering health care spending per capita in the US compared to the rest of the world. While the US doesn't have socialized medicine, the US spends more per capita on health care than any other nation in the world. In Canada, we spend roughly 55% of what America spends on health care per capita, but have longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality, lower cancer mortality rates, etc. Health care for Americans who are well off [i]is[/i] better than health care for the average Canadian, but the consequence overall of the American health care system in its current form is that it's presenting a greater and greater choke on the American economy.
Anyhow, socialize your health care and stop putting so many people in prison for so long, and America will again be the unquestioned economic juggernaut of the world. Keep on the current path, and maintaining food/housing for millions of people that contribute nothing to sociaty, while medical costs rise unchecked, and things might not turn out so well. Or hey, they might - I'm sure that right Americans will agree with what I joked about above about me being to the left of Stalin.
worst thing is that while all of this stuff is obvious on paper shadow, it doesnt matter. alot of our politicians are corrupt as shit. we could turn this country back into the best in the world no problem if they'd get out fo their own way. We keep cutting things that people need to try and balance the budget, meanwhile welfare and other programs recieve little to no workover.
In regards to welfare, if people get checks for free each month from the governemtn, under certain situations im fine with it, but its a government check and its free. at least monitor people better, piss test them or something. everyone i know that is on welfare does nothing good with the money. Its bullshit