Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

tampabay.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 114 posts

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#61

Post by will_brown »

astrodust wrote: post #50
will_brown wrote: post #49

I am not sure the answer is framing this as a Left/Right issue like a lot of the thread is doing. The underlying reason for cuts in Mental Health is the same reason 1,000 State jobs got eliminated this year or $1.2B was cut from FL education the Governor's first year...it is a finite budget problem. Take the Zika virus, a current South Florida news story gaining national attention. I haven't seen a single news spot/a…

"Most of the state will be part of the ocean within fifty years, but don't worry people, we've slashed services so the budget's balanced and your taxes won't go up." Sometimes you need to spend money to protect against a future where the costs are even higher. The mosquito control initiative could have paid for itself with the sales taxes on that $5.5B in revenue that never happened.

Agreed, but sometimes there is no money to spend, and that's my point...it is purely a budget issue not a political one. When your State budget goes from say $70B down to $60B (including a stimulus package from the federal government) and the state is already $200B in debt where does the money come from?

Had the republican (turned independent, turned democrat) governor Crist known saving $5.5M would cost $5.5B he wouldn't have done it, but he didn't and instead maybe he saved 100 state jobs.

It's easy to know the right decision after the facts, but these budget issues cut both ways. For example, during the housing crisis to keep Florida operating I believe Crist liquidated like 1/3 to 2/3 of FL pension trusts. So, yes it's great that FL didn't shut down, but what happens when FL can't pay retirees pensions?

So if you want $100M for mental Health funding who do you take it from?

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#62

Post by brandon272 »

forgetsusername wrote: post #59
newman314 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Health should not be for-profit. Such a system puts the needy at a tremendous disadvantage. Needing a heart transplant etc. does not put one in a situation to shop around. Blind worship of a free market can lead to some pretty obscene outcomes.

> Health should not be for-profit. Yeah, it should be public like Canada, where I've been on a waiting list for 2 years just to get a family doctor... I think there's some middle ground there. The market does solve certain problems.

I am a Canadian and don't have a family doctor and am unclear on the benefits of having one. When I had one years ago I didn't feel like I was getting any extra special attention beyond what I get now by walking into a walk-in clinic and seeing any random doctor.

Perhaps the benefits are clearer if you have ongoing medical issues? Or perhaps my old family doctor wasn't doing things a family doctor is supposed to do in terms of ongoing care?

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#63

Post by tn13 »

jmcgough wrote: post #37
tn13 wrote: post #32

$100M is just a cut. So how much is Florida actually spending on mental hospitals ? Sounds like a ridiculously high cost to me.

When mental health services are cut, the burden doesn't go away but gets picked up by police and hospitals, who aren't properly equipped to handle those challenges. The SFPD and ambulances spend massive amounts of time responding to emergencies involving mentally ill homeless, which limits their ability to respond to other problems.

My question was what is the total cost of Florida's mental hospitals and if that is worth it. Assuming that $100M cut was a 10% cut it means that the total expenditure could be $1B. Which looks ridiculously high for merely 20M population of Florida.

Of course there is a whole point of whether government ought to spend some money now to avoid spending on basic services later whether there are proper studies done and if people agree to it and if the mental hospitals are free for everyone. But that was not my question here.

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#64

Post by carapace »

dalke wrote: post #57
refurb wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't reference Mother Jones. It's incredibly biased. Just like every other political issue, mental health, is complicated and there isn't one reason or person for the way things are. Blaming Reagan ignores the dact that new antipsychotics were developed that allowed patients that were previous confinded to institutions to be released to the community. Also, the ACLU along with the supreme court changed the la…

It would be nice to know what that bias might be. For example, "bias towards truth" is different than "bias towards restoring the US to British monarchy." Mother Jones is of course a politically progressive magazine, so there's a bias in the topics they cover. But that sort of bias says nothing about the quality of the coverage. The Economist is also 'incredibly biased' in what it cover, and they do good job of it as…

:-) I like both of those publications because they wear their bias on their sleeves. It's easier to extract information when you don't have to also try to reverse engineer the bias.

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#66

Post by trhway »

honkhonkpants wrote: post #58
trhway wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i meant "lobbyist" in the more wide sense than the pure officially reported total sum of receipts of breakfasts with senators. I meant it in the sense of demonstrated ability to steer decisions to their own benefit. And when it come to right/left wing - while both are unions, teachers union and prison guard union are on the opposite sides, so pigeon-hole accordingly.

So you believe that adding up all election and/or legislation-influencing activities would reveal that CCPOA is the largest actor in California politics, despite the fact that even in above-board registered lobbying the oil industry spent $22 million last year? I think your claim requires some substantiation.

>CCPOA is the largest actor in California politics

it isn't exactly full order, so you kind of right in questioning my statements at their absolute face value. It is more like partial order here - oil industry and the guards have orthogonal interests. Except for the one aspect - guards consume state budget while oil industry is a source of it. And as we know from the business community whining - CA is considered "not business friendly"/"high tax state". Though of course i don't think the guards and oil clash directly here - the guards' politics is more about redistribution of the budget away from the other categories. I.e the oil and the guards have their own big fields to play, and when it comes to their own fields, the guards have much higher success than oil in their respective fields in CA.

And, man, $22 millions is just a rounding error for either of the players - the CA prison budget is $10B.

If you remember the beginning of Schwarzenegger's time, the first thing he did was taking on the biggest problem of the state - the guards union. He failed. No surprise here given the nature of the task. Still my personal great respect to him - he was the only one who even have ever tried to do it.

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#67

Post by nameless912 »

brandon272 wrote: post #62
forgetsusername wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Health should not be for-profit. Yeah, it should be public like Canada, where I've been on a waiting list for 2 years just to get a family doctor... I think there's some middle ground there. The market does solve certain problems.

I am a Canadian and don't have a family doctor and am unclear on the benefits of having one. When I had one years ago I didn't feel like I was getting any extra special attention beyond what I get now by walking into a walk-in clinic and seeing any random doctor. Perhaps the benefits are clearer if you have ongoing medical issues? Or perhaps my old family doctor wasn't doing things a family doctor is supposed to do i…

I'm an American with kickass insurance who doesn't have a "family doctor". I go to a local practice that has 5 or so doctors and a couple of CNP's. I don't always see the same person, but I see someone within 2 or 3 days for routine stuff and same day for urgent stuff. I think that the moderate trade off between "personalization" and availability is totally worth it, especially since it saves me money (my insurance is apparently billed less for an appointment at a group practice, which means eventually my premiums are lower).

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#68

Post by nameless912 »

Keverw wrote: post #45

What do mental health services do anyways? Just give kids meth in a pill for not paying attention to boring school topics? You can be locked up, drugged, shocked, lobotomized. No rights to an attorney, not even a one phone call. I really believe the whole psychiatric industry is a fraud. Leon Eisenberg admitted ADHD being fake when he died.

As someone who is an inconsolable bipolar wreck without therapy and medications, go fuck yourself. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about on this topic.

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#69

Post by e40 »

atria wrote: post #16
e40 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you don't get voted down, because it's just the way things are. It is really mind boggling how many GOP supporters try and deny this. What has happened in FL since the early 00's is just criminal. How opponents of Rick Scott couldn't get him ejected from office is a mystery to me, if it's not solely "money in politics."

I hope it gets voted down. It was John F. Kennedy that introduced the Community Mental Health act of 1963 to close down and defund mental institions. The idea of cutting spending for mental facilities was put forth by the Democratic party, not GOP. Both parties have continued ever since.

Uh, no.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Mental_Health_Act

First, defunding and not funding are two different things.

Second, congress has to fund it, not the POTUS.

Third, you're one of those "they're both the same" but they're not both the same.

Re: Florida cut $100M from its mental hospitals – chaos followed

#70

Post by astrodust »

Gustomaximus wrote: post #56
astrodust wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Most of the state will be part of the ocean within fifty years, but don't worry people, we've slashed services so the budget's balanced and your taxes won't go up." Sometimes you need to spend money to protect against a future where the costs are even higher. The mosquito control initiative could have paid for itself with the sales taxes on that $5.5B in revenue that never happened.

I 100% agree with your point in priciple. The problem is reality. Government leaders use this principle to overspend on non-productive causes and create debt problems. So end of the day I'd prefer to have a government balancing the budget and leaving some opportunity on the table, rather than the likeyhood debt spent on non-productive causes will become an anchor to future development.

Dealing with the inevitable future where flooding isn't just frequent but perpetual sounds like a pretty good expenditure of money.

Either that or start working deals with other states to deal with the inevitable exodus of people and the complete implosion of the tax base.

Post reply on HN