In five pages this paper examines the difficulties mentally ill patients have in receiving adequate medical care and sufficient insurance coverage. Five sources are cited in the bibliography.
Name of Research Paper File: AM2_PPmedIns.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
An estimated fifty-two million Americans suffer from mental health and/or substance abuse problems annually (Okunade, 1998). These problems translate into a $3 billion in health care costs (Okunade, 1998).
The mentally ill not only have to deal with the particulars of their illness, they have to be concerned with how to pay for their treatment. Although medical
insurance often allow some degree of payment in policy they are not always cooperative in providing reimbursement for costs incurred and, even more disturbingly, seem to be more interested in
reducing costs than in ensuring adequate treatment. Noe (1997, PG) notes many mentally ill individuals:
"have no insurance, inadequate insurance, or inequitable benefits. Many persons with mental illness are denied insurance and others have limits placed on the amount of benefits they can receive".
The insurance reimbursement process for mental illness seems to become even more complex when
treatment is received on an outpatient basis. The outpatient suffering from anorexia, panic disorders, phobias or a diversity of other mental illnesses, for example, often encounters problems in convincing
their insurance provider to provide the appropriate reimbursement for the costs incurred in treatment. The logical outcome of this scenario is that patient care is adversely impacted.
Mental illness, unlike other forms of illnesses, is often viewed as a sort of inferiority by mainstream society and it would seem by insurance companies
alike. This view results in certain stereotyping and ways of dealing with those classified as mentally ill, ways which are not always fair and just. This stereotyping creates