Another (personal) reason we desperately need MORE health care reform

[orthodoc]

Unfortunately I have to agree with Dana regarding mental health care being the Cinderella of most health care systems. From personal experience as both a provider and a seeker of care for family members, my perspective is that it's a mess in both the US and the Canadian (single payer government guaranteed health insurance - not necessarily care) systems. It can be very difficult to access here in the US, but I've found it infinitely more difficult, nearly impossible, in the Canadian system. A single-payer nationalized system isn't a guarantee of access, not at all. Even GPs are almost impossible to get registered with, in Ontario.

I hope, with Clod, that you'll consider the role diet plays in your health (whenever you feel able), and I wish you success in filing your forms and getting reinstated with Tricare. I'm not sure I understood one phrase in your post - do you mean that if you don't get reinstated with Tricare, your parental financial support will somehow stop? Hopefully I misread that.

[Ibby]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

I hope, with Clod, that you'll consider the role diet plays in your health (whenever you feel able), and I wish you success in filing your forms and getting reinstated with Tricare. I'm not sure I understood one phrase in your post - do you mean that if you don't get reinstated with Tricare, your parental financial support will somehow stop? Hopefully I misread that.

not directly, but right now I'm having a lot of trouble getting myself to do the transfer paperwork to get from CCV to UVM, and if I'm not enrolled in school next term, the folks're basically gonna cut me off.

[Lamplighter]

Though I really did intend this to be a political thread not an ibby bitches thread!

Just from a political point of view...

I've long believed the biggest hurdle for mental health treatment is,
in part, that we have politically separated "mental health" from
"physical health", just as we separate "dentistry" from "medicine".
Maybe mental health is a hold-over from olden days of voodoo
and religion, versus s blood soaked, broken-bone mentality.

A simple, yet inexplicable, example is the staffing of emergency rooms,
where dentists of the community are not on-call and do not participate.

This was what so impressed me when John Edwards first
proposed an all inclusive model for a national health care plan.
He actually included mental health in with traditional health services.

IMO, health care should be just what it says, "health care"...

and if a person has a "health" problem it should be included in the health service,
not smoke-stacked away into hierarchies of covered vs not covered,
and available vs not-available services.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Adak is up on the latest medical thinking...