Monday, June 28, 2004

Counties must pay for indigents' mental-health drugs
AP story at the Lexington Herald Leader - "County jails, not the state, must bear the cost of drugs for treating indigent inmates with mental illness, the Kentucky Court of Appeals said Friday. The ruling came in a case by Daviess County and its jailer, David Osborne, who contended that the state should pay for "psychotropic" medications. They based their claim on a 1986 statute that said 'it shall be the responsibility of the commonwealth' to provide psychiatric 'evaluation, treatment or services' at a facility funded or operated by the state. A statute adopted four years earlier specified that jails were to pay the cost of 'medical, dental and psychological care for indigent prisoners.'"