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This is the right answer and it is hopefully one people will converge on, although true to form it will be after trying everything else. Its super frustrating i
by jgon 3y ago
This is the right answer and it is hopefully one people will converge on, although true to form it will be after trying everything else. Its super frustrating in a lot of cities right now because the current political environment seems to want to have a "stochastic junkie" if you will. When it comes to violence, disorder, theft and just generally refusing to be part of society in a non-harmful way all we get right now is a ton of verbiage about how addiction is a disease, these people can't be held responsible for the actions they've undertaken, they're serving their addiction, etc, etc, etc. And so then someone says "Well if they are completely incapable of conducting themselves rationally then we should probably step in and force them into treatment to remove the thing that is making them act this way." And of course a huge uproar comes in response from the same enablers "We can't force them into treatment! They have rights! We need to wait until they choose to enter treatment and they have to consciously take responsibility for completing the treatment."
And so we're caught in this terrible in-between with people who can't be held responsible for their actions, but who also can't have the state enforce care on them unless they ask for it, and regular citizens just trying to peacefully live their lives bear the brunt of it. Its a luxury belief whose costs are disproportionately borne by the lower income members of society which makes it even more galling to watch it masquerade as some sort of progressivism. Ultimately people are going to force politicians to make a choice. If these people aren't responsible then the state needs to step in until they can become responsible. If they have inalienable rights then they also have responsibilities that come with those rights and need to be punished for their misdeeds. The current path is not cutting it and the voting public is waking up to that.
- hotpotamus 3y agoI've been locked in a hospital for chemical dependency treatment, so I have a hard time believing that it's impossible to force people into it. There was, of course, a huge bill that my insurance largely covered, but I suspect that homeless peoples' health insurance is not so good.
- User23 3y agoYou'd be wrong. Medicaid is fantastic. No copays (nominally there are, but you can just not pay, which obviously street junkies opt for), no premiums, full service. The only drawback is it represents a kind of prisoner's dilemma defection and when a sufficiently high percentage of the population gets a clue and starts reliably defecting the whole system is going to collapse. Not for lack of payment, but simply for lack of beds, doctors, and nurses.
- hotpotamus 3y agoFair enough - I do not live in a state where anyone can get Medicaid and I don’t know how that works in Oregon. Nevertheless I suspect treatment is very expensive and the potential patients are not all that sympathetic such that people are happy to pay for their care. I’m sure we can debate how benign neglect is for these people but it seems to be the path that most people will choose. I don’t think I’m all that different in that regard; I mostly look the other way at these people in my city as well.
- petsfed 3y agoI think there'd be a lot less resistance in Portland to forcing folks into treatment if the folks doing the forcing weren't already under a mountain of investigations for their brutality and racism. Hard to fault people for claiming the state lacks legitimacy given how the PPB tends to treat folks.