MONTGOMERY, Ala — Alabama’s decision to cancel its billion-dollar prison health care contract with YesCare and replace it with Birmingham-based NaphCare is more than a vendor swap. It is the latest sign of a corrections system that has been under sustained scrutiny for brutal conditions, inadequate medical care and a long record of failure that critics say the state has been willing to tolerate for far too long.
The Alabama Department of Corrections confirmed this week that NaphCare will take over under an emergency contract that begins May 4, after YesCare missed payroll for prison health workers and triggered fresh concerns about continuity of care. The new agreement follows similar terms to the old one, but the abrupt change underscores how unstable prison medical services have been even as the state pays heavily for them.
YesCare had held a $1.06 billion contract to provide health, mental health and dental care for Alabama prisoners through September 2027, but the company and its predecessor, Corizon, had already drawn criticism for alleged inadequate care and litigation over deaths and worsening illness. Alabama lawmakers questioned in 2023 why the state would keep doing business with a company facing those accusations, yet the contract moved forward anyway.
The move comes after years of reporting and advocacy describing Alabama prisons as a humanitarian and constitutional disaster. The documentary “The Alabama Solution,” released in 2025 and widely discussed this year, uses contraband-cellphone video, lawsuits and firsthand accounts to depict fetid conditions, unchecked violence, rampant drug use and what its subjects and supporters call a system marked by abuse and hopelessness.
That film does not stand alone. A federal court has found systemic constitutional violations in Alabama’s prison mental health system, the U.S. Justice Department has investigated the state’s corrections department, and watchdogs have documented repeated crises tied to understaffing, overcrowding and a failure to provide humane treatment.
The health care contract change should therefore be treated as a chance for more than administrative cleanup. If Alabama is serious about reform, it should use this transition to set enforceable standards for medical staffing, timely payroll, outside oversight and basic dignity for incarcerated people. A new contractor will not fix a broken system by itself, but it can no longer be an excuse to delay the reforms Alabama has avoided for years.