We have a crisis in this country regarding hospital care for the mentally ill. More and more hospitals are shutting down units which formerly cared for patients who required psychiatric care. These are patients who require a lot of staff time, including the need for security guards to "watch" many of them 24-7.
These are also patients who invariably do not take responsibility for, or have the means to, purchase private insurance. For example, only 5% of the 960 admissions to Denver Health Hospital had private insurance in 2007. Even those who do have private insurance find that their insurance often does not entirely cover the costs of treatment; thus, hospitals lose money if they take these patients.
In Colorado about 40,000 mentally ill or drug-addicted people a year show up at hospital emergency rooms. Police get called when persons behave erratically enough to scare someone. Police then choose whether to take them to an emergency room or to jail. Often times these patients scare the people at the reception desk with their crazy raps. They stay a short while at the hospital, then are brought back again in a week or two. It's a never-ending cycle.
1 comment:
It's been an ongoing problem since the 70s. I remember when in another finanical downturn the same thing happened and crime went up. I'm not sure of the solution.
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