There is a number of ways this could be good. But we do not live in a country where any of them is true.
The enlightened humane version would run something like this...
Mental illness is far more common than anyone wishes to admit. It is stigmatized. The human and economic costs to the Nation and its citizens are profound. Any comprehensive solution to our ridiculous health care system must include resources and procedures that make it easier for people to get help before the situation becomes life-threatening. An ounce of prevention where possible, a pound of cure when necessary. Mental health is just another aspect of this. Early diagnosis can prevent terrible misery.
I consider myself to be about three years old. That's when two friends, one of them a coworker, asked what I was taking for my ADD. When I said "Huh?" they replied (and I quote) "What do you mean 'Huh?' You're in the Club." I would have avoided the better part of forty years of hell if screening had been available, accessible and socially acceptable. The economy would have gained from my increased productivity, and things could have been different and better.
But that's not the way this is going to work.
The last thirty years have been characterized by radically decreased access to health care of all sorts. The post-WWII agreement which gave us widespread employer-paid health insurance has broken down. We end up paying more for less than any developed nation. The same drugs coming off the same assembly line cost us tens or in some cases hundreds of times what they cost a German or a Canadian let alone an Indian or a Kenyan. Over half of all bankruptcies in this country are due to catastrophic health care events and according to the GAO the majority of those happen to the insured. The share of health care costs borne by households has risen darned near monotonically since the late 70s. The fact that the drug and insurance industries each have more than one registered lobbyist for every single Congressman and Senator may have something to do with this.
The latest Administration proposal will eliminate coverage altogether for everyone except the wealthy. The plan is to get rid of employer tax benefits for employee health insurance and replace it with a (smaller) tax break for workers which they can use to buy insurance individually. There won't be any economies of scale. There won't be any way for people to negotiate better deals. The insurance companies will continue their pattern of denying coverage to all but the rich - who can pay any premium - and those who will not have to use the services.
During the 1980s Ronald Reagan gutted public mental health in this country. The lie we were told was that "mainstreaming" and private charity would take up the slack. Everyone would be happier. Of course it didn't work that way. The mental hospitals were emptied. There was no followup care. There was no money for doctors, medication or inpatient care for those who could not cope. Prisons have increasingly taken on the role of inadequate badly cobbled together mental institutions.
When children die of brain infections because neither private insurance, their parents' purse or public assistance will cover a simple tooth extraction no rational person can expect public coverage for counseling, inpatient psychiatric care or anti-psychotic drugs.
The point of the exercise is control and the elimination of dissent, privacy and troublesome serfs.
The degree to which we have lost our civil liberties over the last quarter century would be shocking if I were still capable of being shocked. Habeas Corpus, the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Amendments are gone. The government's new doctrine celebrates torture, arbitrary detention without trial, abrogation of treaties, Star Chambers, the use of firefighters as spies, "Total Information Awareness", kidnapping and more.
The warrantless searches which George W. Bush (may his name and memory be erased) and his Wazir Cheney damned in Russia are now available without restraint. Your mail, phone calls, email and conversations are now freely accessible by the government. We've learned to accept strip searches and "Papers, Citizen" whenever we travel. And we can arbitrarily be denied the right to travel freely without reason or appeal. The Department of Homeland Security - which translates quite nicely and exactly to "Committee for State Security" in Russian - has announced plans to use military spy satellites on us here in this country. Dissent even without violence can be considered terrorism and result in one's secret kidnapping, torture, imprisonment and killing without a soul ever knowing.
Under a regime like this what does exposure to universal screening for mental illness mean?
It certainly doesn't mean that you will be given an appointment with a psychiatrist, a scrip for medication and counseling to cope with your emotional and cognitive troubles. It means the birth of Soviet-style psychiatric prisons.
A martyred dissenter is a problem. He can serve as a rallying cry and focus for others. A madman is ever so much easier to deal with. He can be sent away for as long as is politically necessary. His objections need not be considered because he's a pathetic lunatic. He becomes an object of pity and scorn rather than a threat to the Established Order.
This is exactly what the infamous Soviet "psychiatrists" did and Chinese ones do. Dissidents could be carted off and subjected to horrors practically beyond imagining. It wasn't prison. Oh no. They were mad. It was all therapy for (I love this term) "Slow Schizophrenia".
Look at the process by which our propaganda arm prepares us for war. Hudson Austin, Manuel Noriega, Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad all got the same treatment. First they're labeled as threats. Next they're compared to Hitler. Finally they're turned into madmen.
So look for troublemakers to be diagnosed, committed, disappeared and drugged. Their civil rights will be automatically removed, probably forever. It fits nicely and precisely with the discussion elsewhere on taking guns away from anyone who has ever suffered from PTSD. But take care of the unbalanced, the helpless and the ill? Heaven forfend. It would be Un-American. Why do you hate America? Why do you hate Capitalism? Are you some kind of Commie who wants socialized medicine? 9-11! Support the troops! War on Christmas! Hillary!
