#11 View From Medicaid: Emerging Adults w Mental Illness

Proem

According to the Commonwealth Fund, in 2016, spending in the US on behavioral healthcare was almost $160 billion, with 58 percent of all behavioral health spending being paid for by Medicare and Medicaid. According to SAMHSA, The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Medicaid is the largest payer in the United States for behavioral health services. Medicaid accounted for 26 percent of all behavioral health spending in 2009. Behavioral health is a term for mental health and substance use disorder conditions to differentiate from physical health. As a clinician, I seldom met a person with chronic physical health issues who didn’t also have behavioral health issues. I don’t know how meaningful statistics are, except to say a lot of people have behavioral health diagnoses in their records. It costs them, their families, and communities a fortune, and government health insurance pays a significant proportion of those direct costs.

Podcast intro

Welcome to Health Hats, the Podcast. I’m Danny van Leeuwen, a two-legged cisgender old white man of privilege who knows a little bit about a lot of…