The costs of inmate health care are enormous. The state estimates that it costs over $500 a day to keep a prisoner in the hospital and the prison hospital at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston recently announced they will run out of money in a matter of months. County jails face these same skyrocketing health care costs.
How Tinslee’s Story Helped Change Texas’s 10-Day Rule
In 2019, a mother faced a heart-wrenching dilemma. According to the letter she held in her hand, she had to find another hospital willing to treat her infant daughter, Tinslee Lewis, within 10 days—or Tinslee was going to die. This dilemma arose because the intensity of Tinslee’s treatment and unfavorable prognosis from Cook Children’s Medical...