Background

America's healthcare system is broken. In the age of private insurance, rising medical costs, and high demand for medical care, the need for affordable healthcare is more pressing than ever. With many top tier countries successfully implementing universal health care programs, America's limited insurance programs are an embarrassment in comparison. Healthcare hasn't been around forever. The first healthcare insurance program was implemented in the 1940s. Since then, the health insurance industry has grown significantly. New government based programs such as Medicare and Medicaid and private insurance companies such as Blue Shield, Cigna, ect have emerged in response to the high demand of medical care. Although healthcare resources have improved over the years, most programs have left out a crucial sector: mental healthcare.

Throughout American history, mental health has been treated as a subpar sector to physical health and has been underfunded and neglected for decades. These underlying issues were only exacerbated with the deinstitutionalization that happened under JFK, the Great Society programs, and Reagan. The deinstitutionalization and budget cuts that happened in the 70s and 80s resulted in the homelessness and imprisonment of thousands of mentally ill patients, worsening the already growing wealth disparity in America. 

In the past few years, the need for mental healthcare services is more obvious than ever. As we come out of a global wide pandemic, psychiatric physicians are finding themselves swamped with patients as more and more Americas seek out mental health care. 

In a series of conversations with healthcare professionals and patients, I came to the consensus that America's system of treatment for mental health is lacking three main aspects: accessibility, equity, and sustainability. Much of the lack of accessibility comes from the fact that America's health insurance is tied to employment. This system becomes inequitable when those who do not have insurance cannot afford mental health treatment. Additionally, because commercial insurance companies seek to make a profit, they up charge their package prices while lowering their rates of reimbursement in order to pocket the most revenue. The existence of commercial insurance companies has created the cycle of increasingly expensive healthcare: as insurance lower their rates of reimbursement, medical providers increase their rates in order to make the same amount of money as before. After years, the price of healthcare services without insurance but especially mental health services have grown exponentially so that they are now unaffordable for the general middle class. If America has any hope of achieving an equitable an accessible mental healthcare system, it must strive to break the stigma surrounding mental illness, eliminate commercial insurance, and create universal healthcare.