Ronald Reagan's Biggest Political Blunder.

I believe Ronald Reagan was one of America's greatest presidents, maybe the greatest. However, all of the world's great leaders make mistakes, after all their feet are made of clay similar to yours and mine. Some, like Obama, make nothing but mistakes. In the case of Reagan, many would say that his biggest error in judgment was in agreeing to grant citizenship to millions of Mexican illegal's in exchange for liberals promise to secure our borders. We all know how that turned out, don't we? But Reagan's biggest mistake was not in agreeing to this foolish deal proposed by Tip O'Neill; rather it occurred years before when Reagan was governor of what was then the great state of California. We Californians are still paying for this error in judgment, some 50 years later. When I entered medical school 56 years ago, California had two large mental institutions, one in Newark and one in Napa. The Newark facility, where I served a rotation while in medical school at USC, had over 1,000 patients, the one in Napa was only slightly smaller. In those days the mentally ill were sent to these institutions for treatment and, more importantly, since treatment was most often unsuccessful, for long term care. Then along came the psychiatrists, the dumbest members of the medical profession by far. These mental lightweights convinced Governor Regan, who was all about reducing the cost of government, that the great majority of those institutionalized in mental facilities could be managed with psychiatric medications in an out-patient setting; thus, saving the tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars each year by eliminating the costs of institutionalizing them. There were three major flaws in this ill conserved plan. First, people with mental illnesses most often do not know they are ill; thus, they will not voluntarily return for treatment. Rather, to be treated, they must be confined. Second, not believing that they need treatment, mentally ill people will refuse to take the medications that keep them reasonably sane unless forced to by the medical personal where they are confined. Finally, even if they are willing to take their medications and do so, most, if left to their own devices will, sooner rather than later, come to the conclusion that they are cured and stop coming to the out-patient clinics set up to care for them. Any third year medical student, worth his salt, in the mid 1900s could have predicted the outcome of this flawed and silly governmental program and many of us did! However, reason did not prevail and the large mental institutions in California were closed, or greatly reduced in size, and the institutionalized were turned loose to wreak havoc on society. How so, you may ask? An estimated 70 percent, no one knows the number for sure, of those living under your local freeway overpass are mentally ill or outright insane. Similarly, the criminal insane, who should never have been allowed to roam the streets of America in the first place, make up a significant segment of our prison population. Finally, it has become so bad that the mentally ill are allowed to fly planes filled with innocent passengers into mountain sides. Yes, I know this latest abomination did not occur in California, but it just as well could have! In summary, Reagan's attempt to save money by closing California's mental institutions has been an unmitigated disaster! The resulting toll this flawed policy has had on society, and the mentally ill people it was designed to help, are inestimable! The primary lesson to be learned from this fiasco is that the mentally ill cannot care for themselves and must be cared for by society. Not to do so is self-destructive and inhuman in the extreme. In closing, let me point out that outpatient clinics which supply narcotics to drug addicts have been very successful in reducing drug related crimes and in caring for the drug addict. These programs are successful because the drug addict usually is not mentally ill. Rather, these unfortunates simple have an addiction and we as a society have correctly come to the conclusion that it is simpler, and more cost effective, to supply them with drugs rather than attempt to treat their addiction.