Can Better Access to Health Care Reduce Crime?

Yes. Here. But, less in the way, the lawyer thinks.

Health care can reduce crime. Mental illness makes people poor by disabling them. They are dependent on government insurance. This insurance is totally Draconian in denying access to care. They have a relentless campaign to make access more difficult. Paper work, second guessing and cancellation of medical orders, harassment of doctors by regulatory reviews and prosecutions, marked under-funding despite the highest returns on investment (ROI) of any human activity, including crime. The ROI on crime is typically 200%. On health care it is 10,000%, especially if the patient returns to being a tax payer.

These obstructions are subject to undue burden analysis, and should be found unconstitutional. Organized medicine, run by Ivy indoctrinated leaders, just rolls over, and is not defending clinical care. To understand better, think of the ABA. Worthless to lawyers and to clients. AMA. Worthless to doctors and to patients.

Here are the opportunities. Only a small fraction of people with these conditions are treated because getting into treatment is nearly impossible, thanks to rules written by lawyers. Raising the fraction of treated people would markedly impact crime rates.

1. ADHD. It is found in about 5% of the population, more in males. It is found in at least a third of people in prison. One feature is impulsivity. So all crimes involving impulsive acts would be decreased. Beyond impulsive crimes are all other intentional crimes, stealing, lying, batteries, rapes. A treated person with ADHD is better able to calculate the consequences of getting caught, or even the feelings of victims, and may decide to not commit these intentional crimes. Treated patients have stopped stealing and lying.

2. Around the world, 10% of murders are committed by very sick, untreated people with paranoid schizophrenia. Part of the disorder is to not believe one has something wrong, to be perplexed why anyone would propose taking medications, including the family. The family, by proximity, is at the highest risk of murder. Almost all rampage murders have been committed by high functioning, but untreated paranoid schizophrenics. The Supreme Court took over psychiatry in 1976, and ended treatment for necessity. It imposed a hearing, hiring 3 lawyers, to prosecute, to defend, and to judge. It imposed a really stupid requirement of a physically dangerous act before one could even have a hearing, then limits on the time of involuntary commitment. It gutted the threat of incarceration in mental hospitals. No real abuses had been committed by clinicians. The rare ones carried Draconian punishments for clinicians acting in bad faith. The Congress should reverse this highly lethal decision, that killed hundreds of thousands of people by suicide and by murder since 1976. We should return to involuntary treatments by medical necessity. Exclude any decision making by lawyers. They do not know anything about the subject of mental health.

3. Technology is available to reduce the sex drives of highly driven sex offenders to levels where they can exercise better judgement.

4. Most psychiatric medications are 100 times safer than all over the counter medications, today. They should all be over the counter so patients may try to start their treatments without undergoing the highly obstructed gauntlet of getting into mental health care. Imagine pulmonary care. Should you see a specialist for a cold? You would crush the system, and deprive people on respirators that need their level of skill. The common cold of psychiatry is trauma, being millions per year. Today, traumatized soldiers get anti-depressants at the battle field to prevent trauma from getting burned into the brain. You do not need a psychiatrist to address shyness, fidgeting, premature ejaculation, or excessive worrying. Just go to the pharmacy, as if you had a cough.

5. Close the FDA. Replace it with data showing effectiveness of a substance from anywhere in the world and with clinician and patient ratings of experience with the substance or device. There are non-stimulant, effective treatments for ADHD, a major force in criminality. They are totally non-addictive. Government insurance will not pay of over the counter medications, but the generics are cheap. Allow competition by foreign suppliers on the internet to keep prices low. People selling impure drugs should be prosecuted for fraud, and imprisoned. Then they should be sued for any damage, including the loss of opportunity to improve. The prisoner who took a bad drug, and committed a crime because of impulsivity should be granted standing.

6. Even more common than trauma is anger mood disorder. Anger is a huge factor in crime. There are now very good medications for anger. Make them available in small doses over the counter. They will work on the otherwise normal person. End all anger crimes.

7. Lastly, addicts commit 175 crimes a year to fund their addictions. Technologies are available to increase recovery to about 50%, up from 5%. The most important addiction is alcoholism. Half the murderers, half the murder victims, half the suicides, are legally drunk.

We need an antonym for rent seeking. This is an effect where government funding results in unbelievable ROI's. That 10,000% ROI is for the client's return to function. It does not include collateral benefits, productivity jumps, soaring of property values in high crime areas, drops in trauma care cost, a more productive, less hopeless culture and atmosphere, the end of disruption of work and education for the non-criminal.

The benefit would not be an imperceptible 5% or a $400 million return on a $70 billion investment. It would be 50%, and $trillions returned to the economy.