rocketpig said:
HappySqurriel said:
rocketpig said:
HappySqurriel said:
rocketpig said:
ssj12 said:
its called being humane. since we have him detained the government has a right to treat him as a human while under its care. and they do have the same medicine as us.
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This. As a society, we have a responsibility to keep the man alive. He is detained and has no ability to attain health coverage through other means. An ugly necessity but one we have to uphold. It's part of the agreement we make as a society to not treat prisoners cruelly and to let the courts decide their fate instead of leaving everything to vigilante justice.
I suspect many people in this thread complaining about his medical costs haven't really thought this through entirely. What about a guy who was given ten years for robbery and needs a heart transplant nine years into his term? Should he die? What exceptions to we make to this rule and who decides how to enforce them?
I've never seen a government agency be given "exceptions" to rules where it has handled them properly. The only alternative is to give everyone care and just swallow that bitter pill.
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The government has the responsibility to preserve the status-quo of inmate’s health; they should not be expected to go to extraordinary lengths to improve the health of someone who is in prison.
While I think it would be immoral and unjustifiable to allow a prisoner to die because he didn’t have access to readily available inexpensive medical care, it is entirely reasonable to say that medical procedures that will cost $800,000 are far above and beyond what is required of the state to provide inmates.
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And who gets to make that call? Are you comfortable letting the government decide who lives and who dies?
I'm not.
And in this case, the "status quo" means this man dies. That's not a "status quo of health" AT ALL.
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Every time the government spends its limited resources in one area it effectively chooses not to spend those resources in another area; and by choosing to spend $800,000 to save the life of one man they are choosing not to spend that money in a way that could save the life of (potentially) dozens of people.
Or to put it another way, the government is making the choice of who lives and dies all the time and in this case they are choosing to save the life of an old violent sexual offender at the expense of young innocent people; sounds like a pretty immoral decision to me.
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Again, who gets to make that call? Are you comfortable letting the government make life-and-death decisions one at a time?
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My entire point was regardless of the decision the government is making they're implicitly making life and death calls ...
In a world where people are dying all the time due to lack of access to healthcare, are you comfortable with young children dying so that a violent sexual offender can add a couple of years to their life?
