Mental Health at Issue

I am a newcomer to the San Diego psychiatric community, having moved here from Kansas in July. It is my conviction, despite the brevity of my residence here, that the resources currently allocated to public sector psychiatric care are not adequate and that further cuts would be devastating, particularly to the chronically mentally ill.

In Kansas, patients on public assistance received psychiatric sessions approximately once a week at a $60-per-session reimbursement rate. In San Diego, MediCal limits patients to two sessions per month and only reimburses at a $41-per-session rate.

My rent, incidentally, is more than twice what it was in Kansas. Additionally, the MediCal system has yet to even issue my “provider number” after two months. In other words, I have not received one cent for the dozens of hours I’ve worked. Not surprisingly, these impoverished patients are often very sick and therefore require far more than two sessions a month for adequate care. The additional time is totally non-reimbursed.

Because of the above, many of my colleagues refuse to see MediCal patients altogether.

When people are poor and mentally disturbed and untreated, they endanger themselves and other people. Throwing money at medical care, or at anything else for that matter, won’t help anything. Providing adequate funding to well administered mental health programs can only add to this wonderful community’s prosperity.

EMANUEL H. ROSEN, M.D., San Diego