Connecticut’s Mental Health Providers Beg for Increase in Medicaid, Despite Millions Spent & No One is Getting Better
September 16, 2024
Summary Psychiatric Drug Use in Medicaid Population in Connecticut
Health care spending in the U.S. makes up 16.6% of the nation’s GDP, more than any other country in the world and mental health accounts for a reported 5% of that spending. Make no mistake, mental illness in America is an extremely costly or profitable health care problem depending on who is paying, and who is getting paid, for treatment services. What is also clear is that the numbers of Americans being diagnosed as mentally ill continually increases. At some point the question becomes with the hundreds-of-billions of dollars being dumped on mental health “treatment,” why isn’t anyone getting better?
In fact, as of April, the U.S. reports that one in five adults and up to 20% of children experience a mental illness with a price tag of an estimated $282 billion annually. The mental health “providers,” those non-profit organizations that states contract with to provide the needed mental health “treatment” services, complain that reimbursement for services is wholly inadequate. Maybe, but how do these behavioral health providers work?