Massachusetts Begins Mental Health Screening for Medicaid Kids

Starting Monday, nearly half a million Massachusetts children on Medicaid will receive mental health screening -- in the form of a questionnaire -- when they go for their annual checkups. Read more…

While the article lists some positive benefits, the track record in Pennsylvania should raise alarms. Ten years ago, the Pennsylvania Department of Welfare “sold” confidential Medicare records to a third party, which forwarded this information onto school districts. This third party was paid a commission for every child under Medicare that the school district could claim was “at risk”. Their flyer to school districts boldly proclaimed “In tough times, administrators find ACCESS to new dollars, just ask!"

This led to invasive surveys given to students which violated privacy rights, not to mention that the motivation was financial. As it is always with these types of surveys, the surveys were administered without parental knowledge or consent.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

There is a psychiatric / pharmaceutical plan to "suicide screen" every child in the United States before they graduate from high school. Evidence exists that shows massive pharmaceutical backing that will result in even more overdrugging of kids with psychiatric drugs .

Can you take a moment to view this very short video? Click here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfU9puZQKBY

And then sign and forward this petition http://www.petitiononline.com/TScreen/petition.html to your associates and everyone you know? It already has over 23,800 signatures.

It's simply a race to inform enough parents so something can be done about this.

Federal Bill to ban funding for screening here: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h2387_ih.xml

Jim Powers said...

Amy – Thanks for the links to some very good information. I did not know that the effort I mentioned here in PA had jumped to the national level.