alaska s department of corrections is the largest provider of mental health care services in the state. at spring creek correctional center, all officers receive some training in working with the mentally ill. a mandate since the behavior of many of these inmates can be so unpredictable. one prisoner s actions even led to the death of his cellmate. we warn you, the details of his crimes are graphic. what s difficult for me is when you remember what some of these guys have done, and you think, i ve just treated that person civilly. why would i want to do that? it s a little hard to think about that sometimes. they re still people. they still deserve to be treated with respect. located in a corner of the sprawling correctional complex is an isolated mod which houses a special segment of the inmate population. this mod s called echo mod.
additional and he s being asked to call for mental health care services and mandates that he doesn t need, want and shouldn t have to pay for. my point is what is really unfortunate about this is if we want to have a real reform that moves us in a positive direction, we would want to go in the exact opposite direction. we would want people who don t need those services to be able to buy a scaled down policy that was a high deductible, not just catastrophic by primary care, preventive care, basic services they need and let s have a consumer patient centered health care system dr. dean that meets the needs of the patient. that is not a health care program. what happens if you get a mental i llens, that is a lousy policy. if they invent their own health care policy and guess at what they might or might not have, that is not service health insurance.
ralph, people who support it say look, the people who will, yes, have to change their very basic policies but they will get better policies, they will get better health care and that will benefit everybody. know, what is actually going to happen is, people who are healthy, people who have played by the rules and covered themselves responsible so they weren t a burden on the government are now going to get hammered and i talked to a democrat in virginia two days ago whose in his 50s. he doesn t need reproductive health services. he doesn t need maternity care. he just got a letter from his employer from his insurance company. he called the insurance company. the policy they are offering him doubled the deductible and will cost him $5,000 a year additional and he s being asked to call for mental health care services and mandates that he doesn t need, want and shouldn t have to pay for. my point is what is really
in the obama care situation, essential care is covered. good policies, a lot of policies in the individual market are fly by night and will be eliminated. ralph, people who support it say, look, the people who yes, they re going to have to change their very basic policies, but they re going to get better policies. they ll have to get better health care and that will benefit everybody. no, what actually is going to happen is, people who are healthy, people who have played by the rules and covered themselves responsible so they weren t a burden on the government are now going to get hammered and i talked to a democrat in virginia two days ago whose in his 50s. he doesn t need reproductive health services. he doesn t need maternity care. he just got a letter from his employer from his insurance company. he called the insurance company. the policy they are offering him doubled the deductible and will cost him $5,000 a year additional and he s being asked to pay for mental health
that obviously is a very important piece of it. i think there is a broader conversation that our country needs to have, that access to mental health care services and to the stigma of mental health issues. at the same time, it strikes me when you look at all of these incidents that have occurred, mental health, that s only one part of the problem. there really needs to be broad-based reform. that s the thing, karen. we are not looking at a single issue. this is a broad set of issues. it s going to take daniel, we see the president. he s coming to he and the first lady are taking their seats at the navy yard. okay. go ahead, daniel. continue. sorry. this is going to be something that s going to take a lot of time. mental health is just one component. what we need to remember is just since newtown, connecticut, there have been 9,000 people killed because of gun homicides. what we need to do is start with something simple which is