Mental Health treatment reform ….. without a plan?
The N&O article ends with a quote:
The disappointing developments of the past few
weeks offer clues to some of the bigger questions the committee needs
to ask, said Verla Insko, a Chapel Hill Democrat who helps lead the
legislative committee.
“We need a clear strategic plan for how we move forward with reform,
and I really don’t think we have that strategic plan,” she said.
And it is a good question in the face of report mentioned earlier in the same article:
But an N.C. Psychiatric Association report
tracking hospital use shows that adult admissions have risen 23.3
percent since 1999.
This,
in combination with the economic disadvantage of creating a mental
health hospital in Wake County for those with limited or no insurance
or on Medicaid, as in this article,
raises the issues of mental health parity in health insurance (which
might raise premiums) and South Carolina’s plan to bring Medicaid
populations into the private health insurance market (which could
diversify the pool health-wise and lower premiums). Also are the
questions: are we already absorbing costs of mental health treatment
within other forms of health care?
and does anyone here know of some working-model free-market mental health treatment plans?
