Preventing Mental Health in the OC

In my post "Fallen Arches" I was singularly unkind to Psychiatrists for their unwise and untested de-institutionalization of patients from State Mental hospitals.  Unwise and untested, however is merely negligence, a civil matter. It has now come to my attention that the County of Orange has again surpassed my most dreaded expectations.

As I reported then, NAMI affirmed that the only way to enter the County Mental Health System was to have been an inpatient within the last six months.

Now, as the ACA forced the County to convert from its own unique system of capitation called MSI to Medicaid, here called CalOptima, I wondered how the County would deal with the twin "assaults" of parity and a newly eligible and relentlessly underserved homeless population.

CalOptima is, of course, paying thousands of bills daily.  To labs, doctors, and hospitals everywhere.  Plenty of money in their checking account.  So it stands to reason that only way CalOptima could be bouncing checks to inpatient psychiatrists would be the criminal act of knowingly writing bad checks from another deliberately insufficient and likely empty account.

The occasional bad check is no big deal if you aren't poor.  Apparently wilfully passing worthless paper, failing to tell the voters and then conspiring to prevent the OC's poor from obtaining the Mental Health care increasing elsewhere in America is no big deal if you're CalOptima.

I'm no reporter, and I can't check sources, so perhaps the best way to determine the verity of my accusations would be to ask at the next Board of Supervisors meeting.  After all that grand-jury concern about Janet Nguyen's self-serving machinations to put CalOptima into the hands of the Board of Supervisors, I'm sure they'll know all about the increasing inavailability of Mental Health over at CalOptima.  I expect they planned it, and I dread what we're doing to God's poor!