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People with mental illness and developmental disabilities are not a powerful, influential special-interest group.
They are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. They are executives and workers, citizens and soldiers.
Yet their voice is not heard as often as it should be. Now, more than ever, it is critical that we make sure it is.
The members of the Michigan legislature clearly have a very tough job ahead of them, as they work to produce a balanced budget for next year. But the budget plans currently being proposed call for funding reductions to the public community mental health system that are unjust and immoral. Those cuts will threaten the very health and safety of our community – and the CMH system we have worked to build and improve over the last 35 years.
There are two budget bills pending, one in the Michigan House of Representatives (HB 4436) and one in the Senate (SB 0249). Both contain some cost-reduction ideas that may make sense. But both call for huge cuts in the General Fund line item for the CMH system. The cuts being proposed in these bills range between $41 – 70 million statewide.
Under the Michigan Mental Health code, there are two responsibilities that we must fund with GF :
- 24/7 Crisis and Emergency Services – SCCMHA currently spends $1.3 million annually to provide crisis services at our main location and at the Emergency Services Center at Covenant HealthCare. This cost is covered by GF allocation.
- Inpatient Psychiatric Hospital Care – When people with diagnosable conditions require a level of care that can only be provided in an inpatient setting and they are uninsured or underinsured, GF funds cover this cost. More than half (61 percent) of the persons seen by our crisis staff that are placed into psychiatric inpatient care, do so through probate court and the inpatient stay is involuntary.
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In addition, SCCMHA and other CMH providers throughout the state use GF dollars to provide services outside hospitals to the uninsured and underinsured. We project that in FY 2010, 2,586 consumers in Saginaw County with serious and persistent illness and developmental disabilities will need the unique specialty services only available in the public mental health system. All are either:
- without insurance altogether
- underinsured and have exhausted their lifetime mental health benefit
- insured only for limited services that do not include some of the specialized care they need
- will not qualify for Medicaid until they meet deductibles known as “spend down” amounts that may be as high as $1,200/month.
Medicaid funding cannot be used to cover any of these costs.
 SCCMHA also has 171 consumers who are Medicaid eligible – but only after monthly spend-down/co-pays are paid. GF currently covers those costs – about $600,000 per year.
Our share of the proposed cuts is estimated to be between $1.2 million to $1.8 million of our $8-million GF authorization.
We at SCCMHA have already made considerable adjustments and cuts to our budget of more than $1 million this year. Our staff is taking furlough days. There are no further cost-cutting measures we can take. We will be forced to discharge people from our care and place them on waiting lists where there is no real chance of accessing service anyway. They will not be leaving Saginaw but they will still be mentally ill, developmentally disabled, and severely emotionally impaired and they will be suffering beyond our own imagination, be at risk, in some cases place others at risk and our community will feel the impact at every turn.
This will be tragic. The proposed cuts will cost many of them the help they need … and cost some of them their lives.
I cannot, in good conscience, allow that to happen. Neither can you. And that’s why I’m calling on you. Contact your legislators, and the Michigan legislators who are working on the budget bills. Instructions to do that are under the How You Can Help link. Help make sure the voice of Saginaw County’s people with mental illness and developmental disabilities is heard. Help make them a powerful, influential special interest group. Help preserve the care we need for the most severely disabled in our community who will need it next year.
Sandra M. Lindsey, CEO
Saginaw County Community Mental Health Authority
Learn how to help here.
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