Recently I saw a chart that I found absolutely staggering. It presents the differential cost to Medicaid for treating people for common physical illness if they have a co-morbid (occurring at the same time) mental illness and/or addiction. Here’s a copy:
Wow. Adding a mental illness on top of a physical illness results in triple the cost to insurance to provide treatment. Plus, odds are pretty good that there is also significantly more lost productivity (read — days of work missed etc) for folks who fall into the second column.
So why does this matter? Well, at a policy level it sure seems clear that providing quality and accessible behavioral health care should be a priority to insurers — instead of being a benefit that they nickel and dime both the people they insure and the clinicians accepting their insurance.
In addition, to me the data paints a very clear picture of why, even if you have great insurance, therapy is such an important investment. As I was thinking about this data, it seems to me that under the cost figures is the implication that keeping yourself mentally strong, happy, and stable is a very good way to keep yourself out of the doctors office — especially if you are also managing any kind of chronic physical ailment.