Tuesday, September 28, 2004

Sent an email to the psych hospital

So for shits & giggles I sent an email to the psych hospital to find out why the don't accept Medicaid and to my surprise, they actually responded. Here's what they had to say:

We accept Medicaid through the age of 21. We are prohibited by law as a free standing psychiatric hospital to accept adult Medicaid. We would like to be able to see these individuals but are excluded because we are not a medical designated facility. That is a legal requirement for adult Medicaid.

Guess my anger was misplaced. So now I'm going to turn my anger against Medicaid, and the insurance industry in general. How can they not designate a hospital, regardless of what kind of hospital it is, as a medical facility? They dispense prescription medications, they perform medical procedures, there are nurses and doctors there....how is that not a hospital? What do they think it is, a Club Med vacation spot?

Think I'll start a one woman crusade to get that law changed, it'll give me something to do. How do they expect people who suffer from mental illness to view it as a chronic medical condition such as diabetes, when no one else, especially the insurance industry, views it that way? The coverage most insurance companies offer for mental health is acutely substandard compared to coverage offered for all other illnesses. It's just not fucking fair.

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