It Pays To Be Crazy
At least in California, where the highest-paid state employee last year was a prison surgeon who was previously fired for alleged incompetence and “has not been allowed to treat an inmate for six years because medical supervisors don’t trust his clinical skills.” He has, officials say, a history of mental illness.
So now the prison surgeon has been restricted to “mailroom” duty, reviewing paper medical histories, for which the state last year paid him $777,423. This from the L.A. Times:
Since July 2005, Dr. Jeffrey Rohlfing has mostly been locked out of his job — on paid leave or fired or fighting his termination — at High Desert State Prison in Susanville, state records show. When he has been allowed inside the facility, he has been relegated to reviewing paper medical histories, what prison doctors call “mailroom” duty.
Rohlfing’s $235,740 base pay, typical in California’s corrections system, accounted for about a third of his income last year. The rest of the money was back pay for more than two years when he did no work for the state while appealing his termination. A supervisor had determined that Rohlfing provided substandard care for two patients, according to state Personnel Board records.
Rohlfing won that case before the board and was rehired and assigned to “mailroom” work in late 2009.
“We want taxpayers to know we had no choice in this,” said Nancy Kincaid, spokeswoman for the court-appointed receiver in charge of California’s inmate healthcare. “If you are ordered to bring somebody back to work, and you can’t trust them with patients, you have to find something for them to do.”
So naturally, you pay them nearly $1 million a year for shuffling papers. Talk about mental illness.
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