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Governor Corbett announced last summer he would look into privatizing prison health care as a way to cut costs, and similar privatization plans have been floated by past administrations.
Pennsylvania's state prisons already contract with private companies for certain medical, psychiatric, and pharmaceutical services, but the state's biggest health care workers union is rejoicing over news that nurses won't be added to that list.
State Representative Mike Fleck (R-Huntington) is an outspoken opponent of efforts to outsource corrections nurses. He said the training prison nurses receive makes them better equipped than private contractors to deal with prison inmates.
"I think it basically just came down to there are things that I think we could look at privatizing and there's things that are a core function of government," Fleck said. "I think that the consensus was that you know, corrections falls under that category of a core function of government."
He remembers a story of one nurse who had to intercept a back brace sent by a doctor to an inmate patient.
"She literally could take four steel rods out of it and really dismantle the thing, and you had some superior weaponry there," Fleck said.
Fleck said privatizing nursing care in prisons isn't necessarily cheaper than having nurses paid and trained by the state.
"The turnover rate is incredible," Fleck said. "The money leaves the area, because most of the private, contracting firms are not domiciled in Pennsylvania."
Fleck said he would still like to pass a bill to prevent such privatization moves completely.
