Day #13 - Mental Health

This one is primarily to be covered in just a few days, on Day #16 - Pharmaceuticals, but never fear, you know I have more than enough ammunition for both days.

Our mental health in this country is reaching critical levels, according to those who say it is.  The stability of the average American, according to the mental health industry, is in serious doubt.  Stress is at more than record levels, for one.  Thank God we have tons of outlets to reduce it, or we'd more than likely be, the lot of us, in the middle of a massive stroke and heart attack epidemic.  Thanks to all of our phones, tablets, gaming consoles, laptops, desktops and more, we can just launch an Angry Bird, Crush a Candy, match veggies, throw virtual balls of paper at virtual garbage cans, toss Papa Pears at buckets, and Bejewel Jewels to alleviate it, or we'd be in pretty bad shape.  Of course, Candy Crush has been known to stress me out more than normal everyday issues sometimes.  I've already tossed and broken more mice this year than all my other years of owning computers combined.

Anyway!!  Some of these are the ones that tend to scare me:

1.  Depression.  Funny how this by itself is almost now an epidemic.  More people (about 9.5 percent) are diagnosed with what we'll call a "Mood disorder", every year.  Wow.  NOTE:  this baby promised to be the LEADING cause of mental disorders in the very near future.

2.  ADD/ADHD/ODD/ETC.  11% of children who are 4-17 years of age.  Again, I say, wow.  Used to be that "Kids will be Kids"...now, they have ADD.

3.  Bi-Polar Disorder - 2.6% of 25 and older.

4.  Chemical Imbalance - 10%, 6 yrs. of age and older.

5.  Altzheimers and Dementia - 1 in 3 seniors.  Every 67 seconds someone is diagnosed with these. 33%!!!

6.  Dysthymic - 1.5%

7.  Schizophrenia - 1.1%

8.  Anxiety Disorder - 18.8% over 18 yrs. old.

9.  Panic Disorder - 2.7% over 18

10.  PTSD - 3.5% over 18

11.  Generalized Anxiety Disorder - 3.1% over 18

12.  Social Phobia - 6.8 percent over 18

13.  OCD - 1.0%

14.  Agoraphobia - 0.8%

15.  Specific Phobias - 8.7%

16.  Eating Disorders - 4.8%

17.  Autism and Aspberger's....Undeterminable

18.  Anti-social personality disorders - 1.0 percent (I'd say this figure is widely debatable)

19.  Avoidant Personality Disorder - 5.2%

20.  Borderline Personality Disorder - 1.6% (I'm thinking they needed just "One more category" here so they could pin us down with a nice even round number of mental disorders...sheesh.)

Crazy huh?  No, no, I didn't mean you.  And there's even more of these.  I barely scratched the lottery ticket.

According to the experts, America, we as its citizens suffer at a rate of 26.2%, as far as diagnosed mental disorders, or 1 in 4.  What's wrong with this picture?  Hmmmmmmm..........

OK, let's look at the fact that Pharmaceutical companies practically own this country.  The American average of pills we take for....whatever!!...13 pills per person, PER DAY.  13!!  Count 'em. 1, 2, 3, 4,....13!!!!!!  Unfreekin'believable.  You're lucky to find 2 aspirin in my hands, America,  in a given month.  Seriously?  If it gets to the point where I have to take an arsenal of pills to keep going in this crummy thing called life in this crummy country?  I plan to jump off of the nearest killing spot I can find.  1....out of 4....no wonder we have police brutality problem!  1 out of 4 cops are CRAZY!!

And you know, I gotta say it.  The more people that you tell that they're nutso, the more are gonna believe it.  Oh, first, they'll take their pills.  Then they'll stop, and because of their dependency on these pills to be normal, and because doctors are telling them they'll be normal taking these pills...well, when they go off of these medications, that either might, more so, be the cause of a misdiagnosis, a mistake in dosage, or just plain "Pushin' the pill for the pharmaceutical companies?  Next thing ya  know, they're shooting up the local mall.  And we wonder what the hell happened.  "How could this happen...??"  Isn't it obvious America?

Crazy.  Crazy my keester!!  You're not crazy.  At least the better part of you diagnosed that way, anyway.  It's just another point of view!!!!!!  Another way of thinking.  There's nothing wrong with you!  40 years ago, there was very little mental diagnosis.  Funny how things change.  If you're diagnosed, and treated with a handful of pills, you can very much blame the pills you're taking, more than the way you used to be before your diagnosis, believe it.

Can't believe I made it!!  Halfway...Oh, but the best is yet to arrive.  Heck, I might have to do ANOTHER 26, because I keep thinking of more subjects every letter I pass.  Day 14 promises to be just as wunnerful.

Day #8 - Healthcare: Past and Present

Needless to say, this one's bound to be a doozie, right kids?

Now, we all know how things USED to be.  Whenever you'd call for an ambulance, and you didn't have health insurance, you were probably looking to be mailed a nice $700-800 bill to add to your portfolio of medical bills that you haven't had the money to pay off yet.  If you weren't on some social program of any type, your prescriptions would have ended up costing you anywhere from $30-$130 apiece to fill.  A night's stay in any local hospital?  $400-$1,000 a night/day.  Surgery could run you, depending on the level of its severity, upwards of $10,000 or better, probably averaging out to around $50,000, realistically, unless it was far more critical.  Then, I'm sure, surgeries topped $100,000 or better.  So that system was pretty unreasonable in it's demands on John Q. and Mary..  Even with health insurance, you still had to pay a deductible, and a pretty hefty bill.  This was, of course, due to the ridiculous rates in our hospitals, that doctors in private practice charge, and for the high salaries of nurses and other medical assistants...right down to the nifty cleaning crews they have mop and wax their floors at night.,  Manufacturers of medical equipment and supplies got to where they were putting a pretty stiff sticker price on the merchandise they sold to hospitals, mostly because they got a little greedy, after finding out what the hospitals were getting out of their clients......so why not lasso in on the profits they bring down?  In a lot of hospitals across the country, they were charging people $5.00 per aspirin. Wow.

Personally, I would think that, instead of changing the method, or the way we acquired the previously presented healthcare (as well as the rates we were charged for it), it really would have been much simpler to just cap prices.  We could have started by mandating that rates go down on tuition for those learning to be doctors and nurses in the medical field.  As soon as our universities realized just how much doctors were bringing in, I'm sure they huddled together in their boardrooms and said "Hey, we really need to gouge these guys!  They can afford it!!"  It's always about the damn money, isn't it, no matter what business you're in?  Then, with that accomplished, we would have had the means to say to our medical practitioners:  "Hey, you're charging just a little too much to care for your patients, aren't you??  Then, with those prices regulated down a little, quite possibly, the suppliers of medical goods may have thought about it a bit and maybe they would consider lowering the prices they charge private practices hospitals for their supplies.  Oh, and let's not forget the unreal money that health insurance companies charge us these days, thanks to people that are scamming the industry (of course, we shouldn't bring up that maybe these companies are scamming us though, should we?)...how about a little regulation on these people?  It's gotten to where some doctors are charging people sky high, or recommending surgeries and procedures because they know insurance companies will pay for it (albeit, at times, within reason.)  All in all, if we could accomplished these few things, tomorrow might just be a lot nicer day to wake up to.

But we didn't do any of these things.  I'm sure no one in congress even had these thoughts, let alone had the chance to either express or suppress them if they did.  Besides, the things listed in the paragraph previous don't make anyone any real money, do they?  Matter of fact, I see all those things taking money away...medical staff salaries going down, colleges losing money, the medical supply company would have less profits, and the insurance companies, well, they might have to tighten their belts somewhat too.  "GOD NO, we can't have THAT, now!!", I can hear someone on the Hill screaming, "No, I say, we come up with a good plan for unified healthcare, where everyone pretty much pays the same, lowering healthcare costs and showing people it's good to sign up for this..then when we get enough sign-ups, then we stick it to 'em...specially when we need to line our pockets.  If our citizens don't sign up for it, or don't like what we propose?  Fine the bastards a couple of thousand dollars!  Have the IRS be the enforcers in charge of collection.  That way we make some money out of the deal, and it gives the IRS something else more constructive to do besides bothering right-wing political groups."

One thing I did realize, though, was that the original healthcare bill presented to Congress was actually pretty damn fair.  The problem was, there were too many people left out of the mix.  Insurance companies were essentially left to fend for themselves...as well as others.  "How are we going to make any money out of this?" they asked.  Then when the bill originator came back with "Tough!!", well then they lobbied the members of congress that cared about money the most...the Republicans.  They poisoned their minds against the bill, and asked that they demand that the people who would lose out on this deal be written back into it.  And if they didn't, they threatened a deadlock over it...which would really translate to GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN!!  And not just one little one either!!  You don't want/need that, do you Mr. President?"  Sure.  A little blackmail never hurts anything, when you're trying to get your way, does it?

So our Commander in Chief had to concede and write all these losers back in.  They gave insurance companies, as well as others that shouldn't have had a damn thing to say about the healthcare industry, a way to make money on the deal too.  He had to give in!  If he didn't, it would have meant that it would have been buried in committee again, like it has been just about every time we write up such a bill.

And because of all the concessions...the changes to what we had in the beginning of this bill's existence, changes we were bullied into making, it all boils down to this...we The People get SCREWED....again!  And what did we do when it got passed, regardless of what we heard might hit us, as far as higher premiums, etc.?  We rolled over, just like we always do.  "It must be OK, surely our government wouldn't do us like that, would it???"  Never mind that there were little conditions that had to be made that we would have never gone for, had we but known, like that employees of government wouldn't have to abide by the new plan, or that they wouldn't be penalized for not getting it for themselves.  Yeesh.  And as always, when something like this gets implemented, it costs billions of dollars, even though saving money is always presented as the reason for the change. And when it costs government?  As usual, what that really means is that it's going to cost US, whether the bill shows up now, or further down the road.

Done right, this could have been a good thing.  But because all of the outsiders, who previously had made a killing on the former system, all wanted to dip their greedy little fingers in our newer one and make good, we, as citizens lose out again.  It'll not be much of an improvement to what it was before, I'll warrant.  It will be better in some ways, and worse in others, evening it out to pretty much equal to the former, just in different ways.  Healthy citizens will pay more, independent physicians will more than likely have to close up shop, and the line in to be seen will more than likely be long, noisy and crowded.  It'll will, more than likely, just represent (as well as revive the age of ) the age of the HMO, an acronym I was truly hoping to NOT hear again after our slow departure away from them in the 90's.  I shook my head when the bill was put into law.  Oh to be sure, It'll take some time for us Americans to fully realize just what we agreed to...it's not like any of us really had the time to open it up and read the whole thing, heck, i don't think we would have understood a word of it anyway, if we had tried.  I truly hope we acquire some sense in the near future, and work to get what was done repealed, before it all goes south, then try and get a different more efficient one drawn up...or at the very least get some really fast amendments implemented to the one that was voted in.  But I sincerely doubt that we will.  And even if we all gather together and ram down the doors of our Representatives and Senators' offices, getting them to change what's done, has, and always will be, one of the most complicated and truly fruitless things we Americans try to do.  Especially when they've made up their minds to keep things the way they are.

So much for Day #8.  Only 18 days to go.