While a Black inmate in Michigan pleaded for a routine surgery, a private prison healthcare company tasked with his care decided his health was an expense they could do without. What was supposed to be a temporary, two-month medical necessity turned into two years of “animalistic” treatment— and one of the most explosive verdicts in the state’s history.
Around July 2016, Kochise Jackson had developed a hole in the tissue that separates the large intestine from the bladder, according to a 2019 lawsuit against CHS TX, Inc., formerly known as Corizon Health and its successor YesCare, ClickonDetroit.com reported.
The 44-year-old was later diagnosed with colovesical fistula— an agonizing condition where an abnormal tissue opening allows fecal matter to divert into the bladder. He was scheduled to undergo a colostomy reversal in February 2017. The operation never happened.
Instead, Jackson said he was forced to live with a leaking, smelly colostomy bag attached to his side for two years after Corizon Health allegedly deemed his surgery too expensive. The procedure cost $919.35.
“He wouldn’t get the supplies, the bag would pop open when he was trying to work out in the yard and spray feces all over his body and other prisoners,” one of his civil rights attorneys, Jonathan Marko said. “Imagine being in prison and treated like a leper because you have a bag of smelly feces hanging off your body.”
Marko also recalled how Jackson was physically abused by other inmates as a result of wearing the foul-smelling colostomy bag. Jackson said both inmates and staff “scrutinized him” and treated him “like an animal” after he was only offered a single antibiotic for urinary tract infections while his “feces were coming out of his urine.”
In the lawsuit, Jackson claimed his medical providers often failed to provide him with a sufficient supply of colostomy bags and patches— and when they did, they were not the correct size. He also alleged the company instructed its own nurses and doctors “never to write” the word “denied,” but to replace it with “Alternative Treatment Plan.”
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