WASHINGTON – The Obama administration often touts that people with pre-existing conditions and countless others can now get covered under ObamaCare. But there's another group that's starting to benefit from the law -- prison inmates. Cash-strapped state and local prisons increasingly are using the Affordable Care Act to pay for their inmates' medical costs, taking advantage of a little-known provision that lets them shift some of those expenses to the federal government. Ohio, Illinois and Iowa are among the states trying to offload the rising costs of health care – which include mental health programs – by enrolling inmates into a new expanded Medicaid program when they get sick. But it doesn't stop there. The states also are working to enroll them even before they're released from prison, so they have coverage when they get out. Currently, 26 states and the District of Columbia are proceeding with a Medicaid expansion which allows them to extend medical coverage to single and childless adults. Jail operators in at least a half-dozen of those states are then, using that criteria, extending coverage to inmates. The shift means the federal government would pay some emergency costs that used to be entirely covered by the states and counties -- plus, inmates are starting to get coverage for when they leave. Proponents of shifting prisoners into the expanded Medicaid -- in turn giving them access to health care, including mental health and rehab services, when they are released -- say this reduces recidivism. Others, though, argue that federal taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be used to foot the multibillion dollar bill. “The political element of ObamCare is that we were helping what we called the deserving poor or what we used to call the deserving poor...
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