Carroll County Times: Westminster, Maryland

Carroll County Times: Westminster, Maryland: "Following are Springfield Hospital Center’s patient demographics:


I was reading an article in the paper today that sounded very NIMBY (to quote G. Carlin) "Not in my back yard" about a mental health hospital for the criminally insane. When I got to the bottom and read the numbers, I'm wondering who are the insane ones here. My state is apparently spending $160,000.00 a year on each individual housed with no hope of rehabilitation, simply to house them. Um, I'm sorry but this is our best approach? Spending what Obama would nearly call "the richest %" wage on individuals that have no hope whatsoever of rejoining and being productive in society. How is this an efficient use of taxpayer money? It isn't. Now I don't necessarily mind sounding like the non-compassionate one here, this is literally insane. In case you can't do math, that is over $46,000,000 (yeah, 46 million) a year for these 290 people. I could start going into proposed solutions for this, but I fear that would just make me sound harsher but I can say this, this is wrong. Completely wrong.





When Springfield opened in 1896, the hospital had 53 patients.

In 1921, there were 1,700 patients.

During the hospital’s peak in 1955, there were 3,500 patients.

Currently, there are 290 patients.

The average patient age is 46 years old.

69 percent of patients are men.

52 percent of patients are black, 42 percent are white, 3 percent are Asian, 2 percent are Hispanic and 1 percent are defined as other.

The state allots $160,000 each year for each patient, which includes care treatment, clothing, meals and medication.

The staff-to-patient ratio is 2.7 staff members to 1."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Herniated Disc

Fox News or CNN?