On Trump’s Inauguration Day, STAT reporters discuss the biggest questions surrounding his administration’s impact on healthcare and science policy. “Will improvements in patient care slow down? Patient advocacy groups are, of course, most focused on the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, but they’ve got other worries, too. Will changes in (or cuts to) Medicare and Medicaid imperil impoverished patients? What about those with ‘mental illness’ and substance abuse disorders?”
No comment from STAT on the state of psychiatric oppression under Trump.
It is encouraging that Trump has a critical eye focused on the outrageous proliferation of vaccines. This focus on fraudulent science and forced drugging should be extended to psychiatry, and we should not be shy about putting our issues out there.
Trump made a statement about going after pharmaceutical companies for price fixing, and their stocks fell sharply. If this is encouraging, it still ignores the problems of iatrogenic death and injury.
The continuing ‘war on drugs’ rhetoric is disturbing, too, seeing as in some instances we’re dealing with prescription opioids. Locking up the drug kingpins of legal drugs. Of course, he’s not going to do that.
This is ominous…
“I will be watching to see if he makes good on pledges to expand drug courts and mandated treatment while also removing barriers to medication-assisted therapies.”
It doesn’t say where he’s at with “mental health courts”, but I’d say now is the time to worry. It isn’t big leap from methadone maintenance to AOT. You see those two words together up there? “Mandated treatment”? Not good.
I’m not as concerned about the shots at The Affordable Care Act as I think we’ve got a real problem with mental health insurance parody, at least in the long-term we do, with some folks seeming to be thinking that a diagnostic label is like winning the lottery.
Yes that quote is ominous. Apparent this author thinks that would be a good thing.
Frank, as we speak, so to speak, N.H. Leg. Jeb Bradley(R) is sponsoring a bill that would literally write the DSM into N.H. law. The idea is that since the DSM-5 contains “substance use disorder”, it will be easier to FORCE the incarceration of opioid users into the State hospital. God, I wish I was making this stuff up. Based on what I’ve seen here, this fabricated “opioid crisis” is being used by N.A.M.I., and PhRMA, and assorted other anti-Americans, to increase the power and control of the Gubmint, and enrich PhRMA. (I say it’s a “fabricated” crisis, because it’s INTENTIONAL.) What’s funny, is that now, with “Narcan”, you and a buddy can be shooting heroin, and if your buddy OD’s, and you call 911, and the ambulance shows up, with Narcan to save your buddy, and the cops show up, too, you CAN NOT get arrested, under the “Good Samaritan” laws. *BUT*, if this bill passes, you could be taken INVOLUNTARILY – in handcuffs and shackles – to the State Loony Bin. And they think *I’M* crazy….????…. I’m still waiting for the other shoe to drop from the “21st Century Cures Act”…. ~B./
