Well, they're not going to be locked up in mental institutions, like they used to be.
That would cost money, more money than it costs for Medicaid to pay for the meds that lunatics like Loughner take or choose not to take, depending on how they wish to exercise their presumed right to an independent lifestyle.
Locking them up isn't going to happen for the same reason we're not keeping career felons locked up for their entire sentences. Taxpayers do not want to spend money on it.
Taxpayers - not the usual run of folk who drop by the 'Fire, of course - would rather piss and moan and complain about atrocities such as this, than do the ONE THING that would truly make a difference, not just to the congresswoman, but thousands of other families each year, and that is ...
Open up their frigging checkbooks and PAY for institutionalization of the dangerously unstable.
Americans as a whole are just too cheap to do it.
- Tom
I'm not sure I want to agree with you in that I'm not sure I want to pay for it either. But I will agree from past experience in trying to get things done for clients and the like, that there are just not very many viable options for taking care of people who are mentally ill in a dangerous way BEFORE they do something like this.
I've seen guys go out and do something crazy (maybe not to this scale)get sent to prison, get medicated, and in a year or two he is perfectly normal.
