The feds spend a stunning $125 billion a year on “mental health” via programs ranging from Medicaid to the Social Security Administration. Yet the Murphy committee discovered that most of this cash goes to vague and ineffective services rarely focused on treating the most serious illnesses — schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or severe depression.
The Murphy bill would reorient all of this and create a new HHS assistant secretary for mental health and substance-abuse disorders who would lead federal mental-illness efforts. The secretary would have to be a medical professional and would be responsible for promoting the medically oriented models of care adopted by the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH. (WSJ)
The government in charge of mental health? That’s scary.
That’s probably why mental health care has been such a mess.
Anything the federal government does is inefficient.
I would say that picture sums up the federal government.
The problem is too much money gets lost in translation when the federal government allocates funds, and this is just one example of that.
Yet another reason why aid money should be administered through states, not the feds.
I love the idea of having a medical professional be the HHS assistant secretary.
It’s sad that no one has thought of that before.
It is that type of simple, logical thinking that will get America back on track.
The way we treat mental health in this country needs serious reform. It’s such a vague category of illness with obscure treatments.