In this powerful, scathing indictment, Sharkey ( Above Suspicion ) exposes profound venality and criminally actionable practices in today's psychiatric industry. He ascribes soaring medical health costs (more than $125 billion in 1991) to a conspiracy involving the biopsychiatric profession, for-profit mental and addiction facilities, drug and insurance companies. He further charges that many in the psychiatric profession have abandoned the severely mentally ill while private, investor-owned hospitals offer bounties of up to $1500 to clergy, teachers, police and "crisis counselors" for recruiting--one Texas legislator uses the term "body-snatching"--troubled adults, adolescents and children covered by insurance policies that pay up to $30,000 for inpatient care. In 1993, the fraud practiced by Medicare- and Medicaid-subsidized hospital chains such as National Medical Enterprises, with 86 psychiatric hospitals and revenues of $1.74 billion in 1991, was revealed by the FBI. The psychiatric industry, Sharkey warns in this chilling, well-documented account, is lobbying for a large slice of the health reform pie and continues to "create mental illness with advertising."
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Journalist Sharkey (Above Suspicion, LJ 12/93) focuses on the abuses that developed in some large for-profit mental health hospital corporations throughout the 1980s. As an increasing number of health insurance providers began covering costs for in-hospital mental health treatment, some corporations exploited this coverage by basing admission and discharge decisions solely on insurance. Some hospitals used questionable or totally unethical marketing practices, going so far as to pay bounties to clergy, school personnel, and family counselors for referrals. A few of these corporations went bankrupt as legislatures and insurance agencies tightened control, but most continue to operate. Healthcare reform remains a hot topic, and Sharkey adds a piece to a much larger puzzle of what needs fixing in the healthcare field. For most public libraries.
Marguerite Mroz, Baltimore Cty. P.L.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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