How Many Millions are Sick?

I find it appalling that the number of supposedly mentally ill children and cost for "needed care" in the US seems to climbing at an astronomical rate.

In 2006, 4.6 million children under the age of 18 were treated for some kind of mental illness at $193 a child, or $8.9 billion dollars for total treatment. Now in 2009, there are approximately 74 million children in the US and most "experts" will tell you that 20% of them need psychiatric treatment of one sort or another. So that would be 14.8 million children needing treatment. Using the 2006 rate of $193 a child for treatment, the cost will be $28.7 billion for total treatment in 2009.

President Obama has just suggested that the budget should be cut by $17 billion, or .o5% of the federal budget. It seems that psychiatric care for our children will be 52% of that budget cut as computed in 2006 dollars.

My financial sense tells me that the actual cost will be far higher as health care costs have escalated. Using a figure of $225 per child, the total cost might be closer to $33.3 billion or almost twice (1.96%) the amount of the President's proposed cut in the budget.

What a fabulous windfall for those in the psychiatric and pharmaceutical businesses! Do we really have that many sick kids? And if so, do we really need to spend that amount of money to get them well?

I believe there are lots of different kinds of people who smell a pot of money that makes their noses wrinkle up and their mouths water. With that kind of money at stake, there's apt to be at least a few bad actors lurking around. $33 billion is a pretty sweet pot.