July 31, 2023

Responding to reports of a mental health crisis, President Biden wants to create new rules that promise to “improve insurance coverage for mental health care in America.”  Most people recall an Obama promise to give Americans “all the care they deserve” and how that turned out.  Every time Washington “fixes” a problem in healthcare, things go from bad to worse. 

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609268089992-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3028”); } }); }); }

Inadequate care for mental illness is not new at all.  Well intentioned attempts to address mental ill health have consistently failed over many decades.  Bethlem Lunatic Asylum gave us the word “bedlam” to describe the horrors visited upon mentally ill as well as hearing-impaired individuals, erroneously labeled as “mentally impaired.”  The only reason mental health care is perceived as an acute problem is the sudden, overwrought attention given by complicit media, allowing Washington to call it a (new) crisis. 

The new, political definition of “crisis” is “real or false threat to the public that can be used as an excuse to expand government power and control.”  One need only recall the COVID “crisis,” proven to be a fabricated existential threat, that was used to justify quasi-martial law, including suppression of our First Amendment freedoms.  

Biden’s solution to the mental health officially proclaimed crisis is the same as for COVID: more BARRCOME (bureaucracy, administration, rules, regulations, compliance, oversight, mandates, enforcement).  BARRCOME invariably make things worse, not better. 

‘); googletag.cmd.push(function () { googletag.display(‘div-gpt-ad-1609270365559-0’); }); document.write(”); googletag.cmd.push(function() { googletag.pubads().addEventListener(‘slotRenderEnded’, function(event) { if (event.slot.getSlotElementId() == “div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”) { googletag.display(“div-hre-Americanthinker—New-3035”); } }); }); }

BARRCOME cost taxpayers trillions of taxpayer dollars.  The Affordable Care Act (ACA) cost $1.76 trillion, most going to create unnecessary BARRCOME, including 50 state Health Insurance Exchanges.  This author was a director of one.

The U.S. spent $4.3 trillion on healthcare in 2022, 18.3 percent of GDP.  Between 31 percent and 50 percent of those healthcare dollars were diverted from paying for care to pay for BARRCOME.  Such “bureaucratic diversion” explains how Washington steals healthcare dollars to pay itself and denies Americans trillions of dollars in patient care.  

BARRCOME cost care providers both money to comply with federal rules and insurance requirements, and time that is taken away from patients. 

Worst of all, BARRCOME cost patients time and ultimately lives, viz., “47,000 veterans may have died waiting in line” for care.  Known as death by queue, Americans are succumbing to treatable illnesses because they cannot get care in time — time that is stolen by BARRCOME. 

No government can mandate mental health care, or any care, for that matter.  Medical care is the work product of a nurse, doctor, or therapist.  Washington cannot mandate a doctor to work.  Washington cannot order people to attend nursing school or to have mental health sessions at midnight.  The Constitution protects the personal freedom, viz., from Washington work mandates — of all Americans, including providers of care. 

Biden’s solution to the latest, fabricated crisis in mental health is more BARRCOME, exacerbating, rather than solving, the root causes: regulatory burden and bureaucratic diversion.  For proof, note what the ACA did.  In addition to wasting $1.76 trillion, the doctor shortage became worse, and maximum wait times for primary care went from 99 days to 122 days.