OFF TOPIC
Christine,
a policy to get most mentally ill and
severely retarded people out of state hospitals. Sadly, the promised community care
never materialized, and these people ended up treated very badly, many of them on the
streets.
Most of what I've read confirms that kicking the mentally ill out of the mental institutions was indeed done for money saving purposes. The states loved it. Helped out their budgets tremendously. Of course they had the support of the ACLU and the courts. They who will defend your right to be crazy and act crazy right up to (or beyond) the point where the crazy person harms someone.
When I did my psychiatric rotation as a med student around 1960, I went daily to a state mental hospital. I was told by the institutional personnel that there had been a tremendous change since the advent of psychotropic drugs, the prototype being chlorpromazine (Thorazine). They no longer used restraints or had "rubber rooms" or had to hose the mentally ill down to clean off the unmentionable substances they had been playing in. A sea change, indeed. So they had much more docile (but still insane) patients. These former patients are now on the street, urinating and defecating in the parks and annoying or harming normal citizens, themselves, and other "homeless" people. But they are not getting their medications. All of this is in the name of "rights" and "cost containment".
I submit that the mentally ill and society were better off in 1960. The patients had a warm bed and meals and people who cared for them in some way. (I realize that mental health incarceration can be abused, as it has been in Russia, but it's doubtful that that could happen on any large scale here.)
We live in a time where money is the most important thing to many people and businesses. We can always rationalize that the mentally ill are better off on the street (and just coincidentally money is saved). Does it make you feel better to know that the airlines are cutting back maintenance to save money? Or look at medical care. The HMOs tell us that you can go home the same day of surgery. It's really better for you. The pain that you begin to experience later that night when the long-acting local anesthetic wears off may actually be good for you. You don't really need a nurse to give you a shot. The pill will do fine. If the pain and narcotic cause your bladder to become paralyzed, you can be dragged to the Emergency Room at midnight by your 85 year old wife where a catheter can be put in. Then she can drag you back home and up the stairs. Besides, the CEO of that HMO needs that $30 million per year. He deserves it for saving all that money for the "system."
I am not kidding.
Politics and greed have taken over Medicine. Clinton wanted to socialize the system because he believes everyone should get adequate but mediocre care at the same level. The Republicans crawled into bed with their supporters, the Insurance industry, so now we have a shift to HMO medicine. Most people don't have much of a choice if their employer chooses to save big bucks and push you into a system where your choice of physician is taken away from you. Of the two crummy choices, the socialized system is probably better.
I'd better stop before I get wound up. Also should shift this discussion to another thread, I guess. Sorry.
Jack |
