Insurance and Insurability for Mental Health Services

Abstract

Since 1950, health care expenditures in the United States have risen astonishingly, from 6.4 percent to about 8 percent of the gross national product. Expenditures for mental health services (including prepayment through insurance) come to roughly 15 percent of the total spent for health care, and have shown comparable increases. The direct and indirect costs of mental illness amounted to $25.2 billion in 1971 and $36.8 billion in 1974. If future crude growth rates are only half as great as those prevailing from 1971 through 1974, mental health costs are likely to hit $47.7 billion in 1978. And yet, this escalation is merely an indication of frenetically rising cost in the medical sector of our economy.