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Would you expand a bit on your thoughts pertaining to the constitutionality of the activity? I have never given that matter much thought.
It is easy to understand the desire....their pockets are being lined with donations
The unconstitutional aspect I see is that private prisons make it more difficult to ensure that prisoners are not deprived of their 8th amendment rights to 'no cruel or unusual punishment'. It is the government's job to protect prisoners but how can they do that if they are not in charge of the prisons?
It seems to fit perfectly in line with conservative thought. Conservative criticism of government is that it's wasteful in its spending of taxpayer dollars. There is also a belief that profit motive and competition will spur on efficiency and innovation and cut costs to the rest of society. Also, if you view government monolithially, the government has perverse incentive to acquire more prisoners to justify more spending.
So the question is whether government can contract out services involving very central constitutional rights, not some rights taken from a penumbra, but right smack dab in the Bill of Rights. I will mull the matter over. Thanks for the clarification.
Now that you edited it, I understand your post. But old people have a pretty good single payer system going now. Are they really opposed to it? And won't we just have more old people in the future?
Generally, when a private corporation assumes government functions, they assume Constitutional responsibilities. For instance, I have successfully sued a private health care provider who provided care at a prison. Now that was a 1983 case, which applies to states and municipalities (and companies stepping in the shoes of municipalities) but federal Blevins rights cases are generally treated the same way.
That's a bit of a misreading. Inmates cannot sue privately run federal prisons under Blevins provided that state tort laws provide a comparable remedy. As private prisons are not immune from state wrongful death torts in the way that state run prisons are, the suits proceed as wrongful death actions. If there is no comparable state tort available (which would seem unlikely, but not impossible as a state could limit their wrongful death actions) then a Blevins suit is available.
Yes there will be more old people. Difference is, as you can see with the demographics of Bernie supporters, there's a very distinct and overwhelming generational gap in how Americans think about their health care. I don't know an exact age of current citizens people start to oppose our current system, but as today's youth age, it's pretty obvious the minority right now will quickly become the majority.
Allowing people 50+ to opt into Medicare would be a good start. Without looking up tables, the 49 and under cohort who are generally "the healthies" can stay in the group plans, let the insurance companies work with employers on that, and then single payer afterward. You see a lot of people hanging on to work because of health insurance. Want to open up the employment glut keeping the younger Millennials employment rates down? Let people rely less on employer-based healthcare as they get older.
