obama bipolar depression
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Is Obama’s health care reform HELPING or HURTING the mentally ill?
There is so much out there to read, having trouble sifting out the relevant from the irrelevant.
Bottom line: Since Obama has been in office, do you think he has done more to help the mentally ill – or are his policies doing the opposite?
(Mental illness would be defined as depression, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, bipolar, etc)
I’m 21 years old and I’ve been hospitalized several times in the past few months for a mental illness. (Pause for cheap jokes here. Can we continue now?)
This is a pre-existing condition, so the reforms on that will help me. My insurance won’t be able to drop me if they don’t like that I’m sick – which they wouldn’t anyway. I can stay on my parents’ insurance until I’m 26 – which I would have been allowed to do anyway.
Apart from that, no, it doesn’t change things. My doctor is not telling my insurance company my real diagnosis (borderline personality disorder, as well as depression) because it has such a poor prognosis that companies will refuse to pay for treatment of it. Most doctors believe this, as well, so I have to be careful who I tell. My mom had to go to court to get disability payments from the insurance company for her clinical depression. Despite the fact that this is a protected disability, the company was refusing to pay my mom’s disability insurance.
Until some reforms are made on the blatant discrimination against the mentally ill… it’s not being improved that much, no. There needs to be more recognition of mental illness as a legitimate disability.
Tori Amos – I’m Not In Love – Star’s version doing 10cc version