The System Worked - And Somebody Died

Stephanie Moulton was killed this January by Deshawn Chappell. Stephanie was a worker in a group home for the mentally ill in Massachusetts. Deshawn is a schizophrenic who was decompensating for some time prior to the killing. They were alone in the group home. The mental health system worked as designed - and somebody died. This isn't the first time and it certainly won't be the last. Mental health budgets are being slashed all over the country and, in time, more people will pay for the budget cuts with their lives. It's not just money, though. The system as designed is fatally flawed. I wrote about this issue after the murder in 2008 of Dr. Kathryn Faughey, a friend from graduate school (Casualties of a Failed System and No Justice.) Not only have things not changed. They've gotten worse. 

A Schizophrenic and A Slain Worker

Health Care in America is a Disaster

Health care in America is a disaster. We spend more money on health care than any other developed country and get less for it. Consider this:

• Medicare is the single largest Federal spending program and if it isn't reined in will consume almost all federal tax revenues in another few years.
• Medicaid is bankrupting the states (New York, for example, spends $1,000,000,000 per week on Medicaid, that's right, a billion dollars every seven days.) 
• Big Pharma and Big Insurance lobbies dominate health care policy in this country and they are making us sicker and poorer. The new Congress will be no different. Just this week high ranking staff appointments to the committees that regulate insurance and health care came directly from, you guessed it, the insurance and health care companies they are to regulate. 
• Patients pressure their physicians for the newest - and most expensive - drugs in response to Big Pharma's $10 billion advertising campaign even though there is little evidence that these drugs are better than the generics they compete against.
• More money is spent on psychiatric drugs than almost any other category. Yet the rate of psychiatric disability has exploded in the last twenty years, the era when psychiatric "wonder drugs" have been promoted for just about every conceivable problem people might experience. (Much more to come on this topic.)

I'll be writing more about this and other topics as we go along. What are your thoughts about the state of health care and what needs to be done about it?