Are Kansas and Florida going down the same Mental health care road? (salaries)

[Versatile]

Only time will tell.

The mentally ill are already the fastest-growing segment of the state prison population. And one of the most expensive to house. Sharpe suggested that Florida spends more per capita on corrections than all but 11 other states exactly because Florida spends so little on mental health intervention.

Most of the financial burden will land on local governments. The real costs of Negron’s cuts will be borne by county jails and public hospital emergency rooms.

Unless, of course, the mentally afflicted choose to adopt another, less costly lifestyle.

Read more here: Commentary: Florida, this is insanity | McClatchy

[AnywhereElse]

I do see KS trying to "model" FL which I do not understand since I have been to FL a few times and looked at the stats and I see nothing but difference. I know they had brought someone from FL here and he was in SRS for a fairly short time. They have implemented KS Authenticare which they feel will save a lot of money - basically it is a system of clocking in to make sure the care provider is actually with their client but since it doesn't really "fit" KS, they have made so many changes already that it could never do what was intended which was the selling point of the whole system - I am sure more than a couple people made money off of selling the system to the State. They plan to contract out Medicaid. I am guessing it will be the disaster that contracting out the services for the disabled where you have a lot of admin costs and very little reaching the people for whom the funds were intended. Thousands upon thousands of admin cost with salaries of some over $100,000 and the workers on the floor of the workshops making $10.00 an hour or less with those admin complaining that if they got more money, the services would be better. The admin claim they can't hire "good" people for $10.00 or less an hour so this is why my son was abused, neglected and exploited! I remember when they decided it was a good idea, for the benefit of the people in care, to just open the doors and release all the people to the communities - better than being institutionalized but they did not put the necessary services in place for these people. There main objective was to save money, not people and that will continue to be their goal as they hack away at funding. Now, they are taking the dollars away from education too. Why anyone would want to try to model FL, I have no idea!