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Politics : Did Slick Boink Monica? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Grainne who wrote (8650)	2/27/1998 5:48:00 AM
From: Jack Clarke	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

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

To: Grainne who wrote (8650)	2/27/1998 7:55:00 AM
From: Zoltan!	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 20981

Hi Christine! The early 1980's recession and the attendant unemployment was Jimmy Carter's recession, his own Sec. of the Treas Schultz has admitted that. Remember Reagan came to office when interest rates and inflation were at historic highs, both approaching 20%. Reagan got unfairly blamed for that recession just as Clinton has unfairly taken credit for a boom that he walked into. >>seems to have been a pretty big shift from a large middle class, to a system with more people slipping into poverty and wealth becoming more concentrated at the top. You are both correct and incorrect. The middle class has indeed been shrinking, but not because there has been a shift to poverty but because some part of the middle class has moved into the upper tier. While all classes have gotten wealthier, there has been a widening of the gap, which has continued through Bush and Clinton - but the research says that it is a consequence of moving to a knowledge based economy from a brawn based economy. Who would want to go back? Women especially should be cheering that fact! The trend will probably accelerate. Envy is a deadly sin. It just never ceases to amaze me that there are people who think it's a bad thing when someone else succeeds. If you want to read a great, concise and fun primer on economics, read Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom. Or try Free to Choose. You will also come to understand the proper role for unions. As for the homeless, don't you find it amazing that our news media fails to report on that problem now? Especially the dramatic type of tv news coverage that was a regular feature of the nightly news? From what I have read, there are actually more homeless now than during Reagan's presidency! Why the discrepancy in news coverage? Same thing for the trade deficit, breathless Dan Rather used to talk about it all the time in the 1980's but now, even though the deficit is much larger, it gets only passing mention. You are correct when you say that much of the homeless problem is the result of deinstitutionalization, but the blame goes squarely to the ACLU and its political allies. That would not include Reagan, who I would bet only acted as the result of court rulings. It is funny though that while I was at law school the New York courts ruled that that that state's governor was responsible for the rise in homelessness because of his deinstitutionalization program. The man the NY courts ruled was responsible for homelessness was ACLU ally Mario Cuomo! He was found guilty of precisely what you have accuse Reagan of doing. Cuomo was later fired by long-suffering NY voters. As for Reagan's role, I would think that you should be blaming ex gov Jerry Brown for the failure of CA to provide community care since he was governor from 1975 to 1983. Furthermore, the Dems have controlled the CA legislature for the last 40+ years, do they think Reagan is still running California? You will also find that as President, Reagan did not actually cut safety net programs, although he reign in the double digit increases. Reagan made a very astute and pointed observation when he said about his political opponents and the Media: I knew our economic policies were working when they weren't calling it Reaganomics any more.