People with mental illness to lose insurance

[PA Democrat]

A recent decision by Capital Blue Cross to drop behavioral health insurance coverage from its individual plans will leave thousands of mental patients unable to pay for their therapy, doctor's visits and medication. The move, effective in January, has forced 3,400 of the insurer's affected members to scramble to secure a new provider -- facing myriad bureaucratic obstacles.

The outlook appears grim to a population that is already stigmatized, said Janet Bandics, director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness in the Lehigh Valley. For the past two weeks, she has been struggling to help mental patients get another form of coverage.

Ms. Bandics said Capital Blue Cross did not provide its members with enough assistance or enough time to go through the administrative process of changing health plans. She said many of them are desperate and "don't know where to start."

"It's like telling somebody who has cancer: 'Next year we are not covering cancer,' " Ms. Bandics said.



Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10358/1113170-114.stm#ixzz193TJr7BZ

[calimary]

1. Hey, do what reagan did here in California.

Screw the mentally ill. Close the hospitals 'cause we need our tax cuts instead! Fuck 'em. Turn 'em out on the street.

This from a so-called "Christian nation."

[shraby]

5. Then it was "Oh my! We have homeless people sleeping

on the streets problem, what do we do about it"? Big disconnect about the cause, wasn't there?

[calimary]

10. Yeah, unfortunately.

All of a sudden, Santa Monica was overrun with homeless people. Uh, gee, where'd they all come from all of a sudden? People sleeping in doorways and on park benches and under trees. AWFUL. It still goes on, to this very day, and I'm sure, well beyond Santa Monica. Where the hell are they supposed to go, ronnie? Maybe we should send them to be housed at the reagan presidential library? They'd have some nice clean bathrooms to use there and a pretty view of Simi Valley outside.


:banghead:


And there STILL IS a big disconnect between taxes and What. They're. Needed. For.

When those knuckledragging assholes parade around with their "Freedom isn't Free!" signs, I like to remind them - yeah, it also costs TAX MONEY!!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. He did that on a national level as well

One of the many reasons I despised the man.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Big Mistake

Mental Disorders in America
Mental disorders are common in the United States and internationally. An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year.1 When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people.2 Even though mental disorders are widespread in the population, the main burden of illness is concentrated in a much smaller proportion — about 6 percent, or 1 in 17 — who suffer from a serious mental illness.1 In addition, mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the U.S. and Canada.3 Many people suffer from more than one mental disorder at a given time. Nearly half (45 percent) of those with any mental disorder meet criteria for 2 or more disorders, with severity strongly related to comorbidity.1

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-disorders-in-america/index.shtml

[Posteritatis]

3. Argh. (nt)

[ThatsMyBarack]

4. So mental illness patients....

Have only 8 more days to get sick. Then they're out of luck.

[Mimosa]

14. Mentally ill sometimes wind up in prisons since they often can't get treatment.

Some mentally ill get worse, unstable, some take drugs and/or alcohol as self-medication and wind up in jails where they get no treatment. Then they wind up back in society, stigmatised for having been in jail. :(

Our system is cruel, not much better or different than that of the 19th century.

[old mark]

6. Terrible. Many such people have so many problems just trying to survive,

and this has added to their burden. Our for profit health care "system" is a disgrace, and we must adopt a universal health care system as soon as possible.

Please, Mr. Obama and Democrats-no more bullshit.

mark

[cutlassmama]

7. Horrible. Where is the compassion?

[Kennah]

8. Not to worry ...

... the Soylent Corporation is now hiring the homeless and mentally ill.

[jimlup]

9. And so we passed health care "reform" for what exactly?

Honestly, I thought there was a new law that they couldn't discriminate based on mental versus physical conditions. Is it just my state or something?

[mdmc]

12. ..

[Posteritatis]

16. I think that's on the state level

Though last I heard states were actively trying to discriminate more there rather than the other way around, lots of governors saying there's no such thing as mental illness and similar idiocies...

[Jack Rabbit]

11. I take a personal interest in this

Which reminds me, I still need to take my meds this morning. There, now I feel better.

The fact that one is mentally ill doesn't make one a ticking time bomb ready to ready to go on a random shooting spree. It might mean that some one has real trouble getting out of bed in the morning. I was put on meds and nearly hospitalized during at a time when I was entertaining suicidal thoughts.

The thought of 3400 people, many of whom have major depression as I do, who are desperate and not knowing what to do is a serious matter. Some people will fall through the cracks in this artificial person-made crisis and we should be surprised if there isn't a suicide or two as a result.

To capitol Blue Cross, I say: fuck you! It's justanother private insurance carrier that needs to be put out of business with a public option.

[Mimosa]

15. Some out of touch creeps wonder why we are bitter at the blown opportunity.

Under HCR 2010, will the health plans -all health plans- have to provide coverage and treatment for mental and nervous conditions?

[Mimosa]

13. Individual plans here in GA never had it, afaik.

I've always had individual health insurance policies with BC/BS in both GA and LA. In the policies we had, coverage for mental or nervous conditions were excluded as well as coverage for obesity.

There are times in my life when I could have used some counselling. But couldn't afford it. :(

[pacalo]

17. Medicine alone would cost around $2,000 out-of-pocket.

Without medicine, patients' behavior would be unmanageable.

There's a special place in Hell for insurance CEOs. "We don't want you if you're sick; there's no money in it for our lavish lifestyles. We only want to rake in the money -- not actually use it."

[HereSince1628]

19. Did anyone notice that it isn't mental health but behavioral health?

Like most of the naive I always thought mental illness was about problems with emotions, percieving, and thinking.

The focus of contemporary American treatment is about BEHAVIOR. The popular therapies, i.e. CBT, DBT etc. have a lot of B's. And those B's stand for BEHAVIOR, and what will fix behavior? SKILLS, and not just any skills but skills that facilitate social functioning.

If you want to get better, you'd bloody damned well better learn the freaking skills that allow you to behave in socially acceptable ways.

If you can't THEY have pills, that can act on almost any system of the body and THEY will narrow your behavioral repetoire, regardless of whether that hurts or helps your feelings or thinking.

[Jack Rabbit]

20. No, and the reason is that "behavioral" health is just a PC way of saying mental health

NAMI, the group for which Ms. Bandics works, also promotes the idea of calling such things as major depression, bipolar (manic) depression and schizophrenia brain diseases in order to remove the stygma attached to mental illness. I don't know if they're still doing that (it didn't catch on), but they were when I took a class from them several years ago.

By the way, did you read in the OP where it said that without insurance, these people cannot get their pills? Trust me, you don't want to see me when I've been without my Paxil for a few days.

[truedelphi]

21. Too bad people don't know- we are all just one brain injury away

From perhaps suffering from a mental illness ourselves.

One slip in a bathtub, one fall down some stairs, one stroke that occurs while we sleep.

It is an illness most people think of as only happening to "them," but that "them" is "us.".

[Maraya1969]

22. Can't this be controlled under "not allowed to drop you for pre-existing conditions?

I know this may be a stretch but it seems to me that Blue Cross cannot drop the clients it already has for mental health benefits because that would fall under dropping someone for a pre-existing condition.

The difference is they are dropping all of the people instead of a select few. If it were one person that would be illegal according to the new Health care reform.

I bet a really talented lawyer could argue this in a court of law.

[Kurovski]

23. Insurance corpse: Worthless fuckbags

I can't wait for the goddam public option to come...and it will.

[LiberalEsto]

24. You'd think the pharmaceutical firms would act up

because they stand to lose an awful large number of consumers of mental health medications.