Playing with lives
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
By Staff
N.C.'s mental health shambles deserves more than a shrug
The estimated 212,000 North Carolinians who seek help from the state mental health system each year are among the state's most vulnerable citizens. Their well-being shouldn't be tinkered with indiscriminately.
Yet for the better part of this decade state government has been hard at work on an ill-planned overhaul of mental health that has hampered care, wasted hundreds of millions of tax dollars and made life harder for struggling patients.
That shambles deserves action, not indifference from the state's highest-ranking elected official. Gov. Mike Easley has shrugged and blamed county organizations for grievous mistakes. Yet the fact is, state bureaucrats he appointed were in charge when reforms were bungled. Gov. Easley has the authority to get things fixed, and he ought to use that power — now.
A six-month investigation by the Raleigh News & Observer found that the state has wasted at least $400 million on an ill-conceived and poorly executed plan that pushes care to private companies in order to treat more mentally ill people in their own communities and fewer in the state's four psychiatric hospitals. (more…)
Last 5 posts in Daily News
- Perdue: Economy will block free tuition in '09 - January 8th, 2009
- More for Moore? - January 8th, 2009
- Donors slip past laws on ethics - January 8th, 2009
- Corruption-caliber government - January 8th, 2009
- '09 N.C. inaugural ball has more glitz - January 8th, 2009
Email This Post
Print This Post
