This story is interesting:
A trial that opened more than a year ago has become bogged down in Boston federal court. There have been hundreds of hours of testimony from witnesses, including 10 medical specialists paid tens of thousands of dollars. The judge himself even hired an expert to help him make sense of it all.
The question at the center of the case: Should a murderer serving life in prison get a sex-change operation at taxpayer expense?
Consider this: the cost of just the experts exceeds the cost of the surgery.
An Associated Press review of the case, including figures obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and interviews, found that the Correction Department and its outside health care provider have spent more than $52,000 on experts to testify about an operation that would cost about $20,000.
I guess the argument is that it would be better to spend the money on experts (not to mention the other costs of trial) than to open the floodgates and pay for the surgery for this man and the two others who have requested it.
But if only three have requested the surgery, wouldn’t it cost the taxpayers less money to just go ahead and pay for the surgery?
Your thoughts?
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Cory – glad you like them! And I intend to keep posting them 😉
It was madness to ever consider this in the first place.
I think anon gave the final decision. The court can refuse to consider other surgeries – elective or required – as beyond the scope of this one. This one has implications for the order and safety of guards and prisoners. The down side is, if their decision is limited to these surgeries, that means the next time a case comes up for surgery that’s not such a hot button, the expenses and hourly billing will start up again. One point Vivian was making after all is the state could have paid for three of these surgeries for the same price as defending itself from having to pay for just one.