Neither Tarrant County nor its hospital district, JPS Health Network, pay for ambulance rides for inmates coming from the county’s jails. Instead, those bills go to the incarcerated people themselves — and the majority can’t or won’t pay. In all, MedStar is owed about $2.6 million from transports in 2022. To stop the bleeding, MedStar has been quietly lobbying Tarrant County and JPS to share the financial burden.
