Mental Healthcare under Romney "shocking" in Massachusetts

They just published this piece of news today?

Mitt Romney Massachusetts Health Care System Inadequacy 'Glaring,' 'Shocking'
Posted: 11/06/2012

WASHINGTON -- In the past few months, Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has argued that repealing President Barack Obama's health care reform law would not make a difference to most uninsured. After all, they can always go to the emergency room.

"If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die,” Romney told "60 Minutes" in a September interview. “We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

When pushing his own health care law as governor, Romney argued against relying on hospital visits as a safety net. Emergency room care also cost him a very public legal defeat during his term. The presidential candidate has a thick court file detailing just how inadequate emergency rooms can be for the most vulnerable.

For much of his time in office, Romney fought a class-action lawsuit known as Rosie D. Named for the lead plaintiff, the case was filed in 2001 in an effort to force Massachusetts to provide home-based mental health services for children. The case argued that too many of the state's children -- on Medicaid for various mental health issues such as autism, bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder -- were being unnecessarily warehoused in institutions and spending too much time in emergency rooms.

The children became known as “stuck kids.”

Instead of working toward a policy fix, the Romney administration chose to take the case to trial. The evidence showing an inadequate mental-health system was overwhelming and well known at the time.
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