Request By:
Mr. Frederick G. Neikirk
Pulaski County Attorney
104 W. Columbia Street
Somerset, Kentucky 42501
Opinion
Opinion By: Robert F. Stephens, Attorney General; By: Charles W. Runyan, Assistant Deputy Attorney General
You raise the question as to who is responsible for paying the hospital bill and medical expenses for prisoners lodged in the county jail. Apparently there is some belief that under the new district court system all of the prisoners are now state prisoners. It is true that under KRS 64.150 the state pays the dieting fees of such prisoners where they have been charged with violating state statutes. However, that does not answer your question.
We assume that the prisoners are indigent, otherwise they would have to pay their own hospital bills and medical expenses.
The answer to your question is simply that the county in which the indigent prisoner resides has the primary responsibility for paying the hospital bills and medical expenses accruing while they are in the county jail. See KRS 67.080(8); City of Richmond v. Madison County Fiscal Court, 290 Ky. 293, 161 S.W.2d 58 (1942); and City of Paducah v. McCracken County, 305 Ky. 539, 204 S.W.2d 942 (1947). From these cases emerges the proposition that the city in which the indigent prisoner resides also has the responsibility for paying such medical cost, except that the courts have never spelled out precisely just what the city's share of such burden would be. Therefore, we have to turn inevitably to the rule the county has the primary duty to care for such poor and sick persons who are incarcerated in the county jail.