The ACA and mental health from a county perspective.

[upaloopa]

We have been talking about mental health and guns. And we have been talking about the ACA.
I work in county mental health. We have a large number of indigent patients. By law we must give them services. We cannot bill Medicaid because at the present time they are not eligible. These are mostly older men who are not on Medicare.
We get money from state vehicle license fees and sales tax to pay for the indigent.
If we could bill Medicaid we would only get 50% of our costs reimbursed the rest coming from county general funds and the above mentioned taxes.
Starting Jan 1, 2014 these indigent men will almost all qualify for Medicaid and we will be reimbursed 100% of our costs thanks to the ACA.
We will still be getting the above mentioned taxes which will then go to pay community mental health providers to treat more people then they would have without the ACA.

[dkf]

1. Beyond access, what are we getting wrong?

Many of the shooters had seen someone. Yet they still did what they did.

[upaloopa]

2. You cannot connect the dots.

Mental health problems plus gun ownership.
We do not cure mental health problems we treat them. If there was a federal gun registry and a federal medical data bank we could connect the dots.

[dkf]

3. But for delusions, paranoia, hearing voices...

How treatable are they? What is our success rate? With insurance are the costs prohibitive?

Do doctors simply prescribe then that is it?

[upaloopa]

4. Most times there are follow up sessions. You can't prescribe without

seeing the patient regularly.