Dorthea Dix Mental Hospital in Raleigh is slated to close soon. Another (short-term-as-I-understand-it-if-I-understand-it-at-all) facility is being built in Butner, N.C.
Pause (re-processing unpleasant medical school memory).
The state is trying to decide what to do with the campus.
The sorry state of mental health facilities and funding for mental health services in this state is a subject that has been followed extensively by ProCare on its blog.
A lot of the problem in state funding is tied up in Medicaid shortfalls. Of course, our state government does not want to take a really close look at WHY those shortfalls exist. That would shed a not-very-favorable light on those charged with governance – and their very important cronies in high places. The federal money tree is bare after being shaken down. Some reports indicate that nearly a billion dollars was misappropriated in the “Disproportionate Share” hospital-billing scam, before the NC State Auditor figured out what was going on (because NC and US DHHS officials were asleep). The story was widely reported in 2004, only to very quickly fall off the radar. The last I heard (from my Congressman, Howard Coble), state and federal big dawgs were trying to quietly sweep it all under the rug . . . in fact, Coble put on his kneepads and accompanied former Governor (and CMC executive) Jim Martin to Washington in order to plead for a pennies-on-the dollar deal. Of course, in this state, the big newspapers in Charlotte (home of CMC, where this scam was born) and Raleigh and Greensboro blatantly pander to the administrations and politicians (Hunt & Easley) on whose watches this mess happened.
Besides, it was all "too complex" for the mere plebes paying the bills to understand. One needs more than 100 words to explain it.
For a story that the John Locke Foundation thought was "important", a whole lot of nothing has happened. I still do not understand why the people involved have not gone directly to jail.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I do understand. I just don’t like it.
As an aside, a brief Goggle search on the subject of Dix Hill led me to “Dix Hill Publishing”, then Slate, then Ezra Klein. The therapists are right. Free-associating can be fun . . . and educational.
I thought Mr. Klein was right on the money (tongue firmly in cheek) in his commentary on the state of blogging as a media “revolution”. His thoughts certainly mirror my own after a nearly year-long stint as a regular “commentator” on the N&R blogs (not to mention a discouraging weekend spent debating the particulars of my case with GSO “High Priest” Ed Cone). And Ezra’s observations were made long before I ever discovered the N&R's Editor's Blog and dived in the pool.
A Greensboro City Council member (Sandy Carmany) who jumped in the same pool made the decision to bow out/step back yesterday after having a similar experience. She, like I, jumped into the pool because she saw potential in what the N&R has called "citizen journalism". It was almost funny to watch all the big guns protest. "We're important, we really are! Come back and play with us."
I’m pretty much out of those pools now. Being “diagnosed” with PTSD by a self-proclaimed “idiot” (on JR's blog) was quite enough to make me step out and shake off the pee-water.
They've been talking about building a park on Dix Hill.
It will be nice for all of the new outpatients who don't have a place do go and can't get their medication.
Heavy sigh.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment