This question of the equality of healthcare benefits to prisoners and to law abiding people is a difficult one, raising both issues of justice as well as basic human rights. As much as people inside prison might have committed heinous crimes – even murder and other violence related crimes – surely they ought to be entitled to necessary care and medical attention whilst completing their term of sentence. That does not necessarily mean that they must necessarily be afforded with limitless or superior levels of healthcare benefit than other ordinary law abiding people though.
It is because the prisoners who committed these offenses are directly under the supervision and care of the government that their basic human needs must be catered for. When a person is incarcerated they no longer have the ability to perform work and to earn themselves sufficient money, to be afforded freedom of placement and lifestyle, or to be able to procure medical treatment for themselves. Hence the government has an inherent duty of care, to safeguard and promote the good health and wellbeing of their prisoners, from avoidable ill health or suffering. To refuse prisoners what is necessary just for having committed a crime does not easily appear ethically acceptable in human right terms.
However one cannot fail to empathize with the taxpayer’s reaction when they feel that public money is to be used to grant prisons treatment. Citizens are themselves struggling in many circumstances with the cost of treatment, even with the fact they work their way to try and afford to treat them self. A prisoner who has done people no service, but indeed great harm and suffering, appears somewhat entitled to state medical care is difficult to justify from the taxpayers perspective. More and more so when they are accountable for acts like murder.
In my opinion it must be looked at from a different perspective- Prison medicine is a form of punishment as much as the sentence itself, it is not a granted reward. A sentence deprives a criminal person of freedom and is put in place for the protection of people in society- not, as far as I'm concerned anyway- from essential human rights. If an inmate gets treated, it doesn't equate to any acceptance or forgiveness for their crime and the hurt they have undoubtedly caused other innocent and law abiding peoples- it merely attempts to prevent and cure illness, which in fact can also spread among members of the prison community and to prison staff.
I believe that an equal, just provision is to render sufficient and medically warranted treatment to inmates while on their sentence, nothing extra or unjustified and it goes without saying, no unnecessary special advantages- not giving unnecessary costs to what should just be on health needs, irrespective of ones place on the social ladder or crimes committed.
The public can penalise the offender, but must maintain societal morals by recognizing an intrinsic humanness within it. Giving prisoners adequate medical care does not condone criminal behavior; it establishes the capacity of justice to coexist with care, responsibility and humane dignity.
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