The maltreatment of mentally-ill patients

Recently there has been news that mental patients are no longer getting treatment and are being discharged regardless of whether they have been diagnosed as fit to live outside their mental institutions. This has been an issue that is usually looked over because it doesn’t really affect people unless they have an immediate family member who has been diagnosed as mentally ill.
People don’t seem to understand the importance of taking care of the mentally ill and more then often family members can’t take care of them, often because they don’t have the time. This is where mental health facilities step in.
Recently, mental health institutions have been turning away patients or the patients are forced to leave simply because they can no longer afford treatments. The newly restored Mental Health Parity Act is an act that protects businesses with 50 or more people to keep the same health care coverage that they have now. This is bad news for those companies’ employees because when they have mentally ill family members that are covered by this insurance they can no longer receive help. This is causing people to pay out of pocket or the patient will have to leave the institute all together.
When people take mental patients out of institutions where they are constantly looked after, and put them in environments where they have more freedoms, this could potentially not only be a danger for the patient but for the public as well.
There has been recent news of a man, Maurice Clemmons, 37, who went around shooting police officers. After the shootings, Clemmons was eventually shot and killed by a police officer. In more recent news it has been said that Clemmons was mentally ill and a threat to the public, but not enough to have him committed. This information could make one think that if all companies were still covered for mental health insurance maybe one of this man’s family members would have had him admitted. If this was the case it could have saved lives and a lot of heartache for friends and family members of the murdered police officers.
Many companies have been telling people that they will still be covered for all types of medical care. This is not entirely true. The Mental Health Parity Act may not always eliminate mental health coverage but with the new limitations it is nothing like it was in the past. Some of these limitations include: limiting the number of visits in a year; or the frequency of treatments; and there have also been changes in how much the co-pay could come out to be, in some cases $500 or more.
People who work in companies with less than 50 employees are very angry about this new act, and have every right to be! Why is it fair that only the larger companies get to keep their current coverage and the smaller companies have to lose it? Employees who are part of larger companies argue that this act is not a big deal and that it’s all part of President Obama’s new health care plan. But why would the president want to take away peoples health benefits?
With the state that our economy is in, people are already counting their losses in many aspects, and many have been forced to spend their money more responsibly, certainly when something as expensive and important as mental health care coverage is being taken away from some people who know where they will end up if they have no other option but to keep their family in treatment because they are not fit to be discharged?
Some could say that this law is not only unfair but could also count as discrimination. It seems that the government is discriminating against smaller companies by taking away their mental health care coverage. It’s common that people who work in larger corporate companies have a larger yearly income. So, why is it that they are making people who have a smaller yearly income pay more?
With how much our country has come together this past year, it’s sad to see our government segregating companies based on their amount of employees.
 

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