| Popis: |
In 1976, the Supreme Court first recognized that people in prison have a constitutional right to health care for serious medical needs (Estelle v. Gamble, 1976). In the decades that followed, both the incarceration rate and the cost of healthcare have skyrocketed, increasing incentives for resource-conscious institutions to restrict care in ways that harm incarcerated people and the public health. Litigation can provide an important check on the worst of those abuses at both individual and systemic levels, though in the decades since Estelle was decided, judicial decisions, legislation, and correctional policy have raised significant obstacles to ensuring the right to constitutionally adequate healthcare is realized. This chapter discusses the parameters of the Eighth Amendment right to adequate health care, provides an overview of correctional medical care litigation and the legal standards courts use in assessing claims of constitutionally inadequate care, and explores how those standards have been applied to different types of health-care issues. The chapter also discusses institutional reform litigation, exploring how large class-action lawsuits may be used to address systemic deficiencies in correctional medical care. |
