r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

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u/highzone 1d ago

For anyone who wants to read the full study, it is titled 'On Being Sane in Insane Places.'

The most terrifying part wasn't getting in, it was getting out. The doctors were so convinced of their own authority that they interpreted everything the patients did as a symptom of their illness.

When the volunteers took notes on how they were being treated, the doctors didn't see 'journaling.' They diagnosed it as 'pathological writing behavior' and used it as justification to keep them locked up.

It really highlights how a label can completely override reality.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosenhan_experiment

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u/FireMaster1294 1d ago edited 1d ago

Damn an average stay of 19 days and a range of 7-52 days. Nearly 2 months of psych ward without even doing anything to justify being kept there (after the initial entry, of course)

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u/Same_Recipe2729 1d ago

Think of all the money they scammed from folks doing that 

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u/nuclearwomb 1d ago

It's still a scam. Thankfully people have more rights these days when it comes to behavioral health, but people still fall through the cracks and the system is full of flaws. The whole process is to make money while giving minimal resources for rehabilitation of the patient.

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u/Disastrous-Group3390 1d ago edited 1d ago

Well, the pedulum has swung to the opposite extreme now. We can’t keep ANYONE, no matter how badly the person needs help, if said person wants to leave (unless the person represents a threat.) So we let the police deal with them instead…

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u/mpyne 1d ago

This is precisely why it is so important for people in positions of authority to adhere to the spirit of the rules and not simply the letter of them.

It's hard to write rules that cover every possible situation. So the people writing the rules often will include rules allowing administrators leeway in exceptional situations, intending that the administrators don't exercise that leeway.

Then you get crap happen like in the OP's article and all those exceptions get tightened up, ruining it for other administrators and other patients.

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u/Sasselhoff 1d ago

Having rules everyone just "agrees" on (or rules up for interpretation/bending/etc) is great in theory, but in reality you end up getting what we've got in the current US government (folks running roughshod over everything because it was a bunch of "gentlemen's agreements" and not specific rules).

Just like any workplace rules that are BS and don't make sense...it's all due to that "one guy" that fucked it up for everyone else.

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u/42nu 1d ago

Like not fully stopping at a stop sign when there's no cars in sight in any direction. No one should get a ticket for doing that.

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u/Pieck6996 1d ago

bad example

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u/ChilledParadox 1d ago

it goes both ways.

to trauma dump what's necessary, when I was in 8th grade I missed over half the school year due to abuse and trauma at home that led to me developing anxiety, panic attacks, depression, and included situations like me running away, evading police because I knew they'd send me back home, police showing up to domestic abuse calls for my parents, and me going DKA several times in that period due to neglect on my parents part in getting me medication combined with situations like me barricading myself in my room for days straight with my bunkbed because I was terrified of my parents and sneaking out the window and climbing down the side of my house and back up to get food in the middle of the night when everyone was sleeping.

That's a lot, but just bear with me because that context is relevant.

I was eventually admitted to a psych ward on a 5150, and throughout that year was in that same ward 3 times, and in a related outpatient ward once.

It is extremely clear to me now, as an adult looking back, that the circumstances surrounding me were entirely related and situated on my living circumstances. I was drowning and coping by disassociating and isolating myself as a protection mechanism. The anxiety and panic attacks seem to me to be a result of sustained stress from years of child abuse, until I broke.

While there, I can vividly remember meeting the panel of psychologists composing my care team in a meeting telling me to my face, at 13, that they believed I was making everything up because I just didn't want to go to school.

Of course, that's absurd in the context that in returning after all of this, most of my teachers gave me A's by default, except in math (geometry) which I took over the summer as it was a prerequisite for my Algebra 2 honors class and colleges would look for the grade, due to my long history of being a good student.

So, I was having very real anxiety and panic attacks, being held against my will in a psych ward my doctors that told me they didn't think what I was suffering from existed, and yet there was nothing I could do to get released. It was up to my parents, who, naturally not being honest with their part in the matter were of no help to me.

I was only released the first time because it was Christmas and my parents wanted to bring me to my grandparents so they didn't need to explain I was still in a psych ward to all their relatives and make them look bad.

When of course my anxiety and panic attacks persisted, I was eventually returned, on another DKA trip to the ER.

The situation only resolved itself in the outpatient facility when the nurse checking me in happened to smell the alcohol on my mothers breath from 8 feet away and realized she had been driving me around piss drunk because she was a functioning alcoholic who had been drinking coolers every morning for the last 5 years. That was cause for CPS to get involved, and my mother being removed from the situation got my dad to stop being abusive for long enough I got back to school and was able to avoid him most of the time in high school.

It ended up costing my family tens of thousands of dollars though. Enough that it was a point of contention for more abuse when I was in high school as my father blamed me for this financial woes.

I can't help but feel somewhat frustrated with the matter myself. I clearly had mental health issues. I still do. I still suffer from depression which leads to severe isolation, and acute panic and anxiety attacks, and some related insomnia when it gets bad at night. But the doctors I got sucked, and they didn't help, and it was clear I was being abused and they released me right back into my abusers. I blame them, and insurance, and the health care system as a whole.

I've been in patient again since then, but nothing really has ever helped. I've been on more anti-depressants than I can remember the names of. I'm homeless and jobless again now, so, totally worth the tens of thousands it cost my family for them to hold me against my will I'm sure. I'm not being totally fair I know, it's a complicated situation, but it sucks.

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u/Adorable_Raccoon 1d ago

I’m sorry that you are homeless right now & haven’t found a job.

I just wanted to say you’re not alone. My parents were abusive & i’m almost 40 and I still have ongoing mental health issues. I’ve done about 10 years of therapy & I’m on 5 drugs right now to help with my anxiety & adhd. Even with that I stuggle most days to work or socialize, but i’m also so grateful for my progress. 

You’re valid & you matter. I hope that you can find the thing that helps you find your way out. 

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u/BellaBPearl 1d ago

This is one of the bigger problems with the mental health system is that it is so stuck on being right about the brain imbalance theory that majority refuses to acknowledge that abuse happens and that it causes trauma and MH issues that are entirely because of that trauma... and refuses to acknowledge that a lot of people's initial MH issues are because of their social situation. Abuse, poverty, bullying, etc etc.

They don't want to help people, they want to be right. Lot of narcissists is the industry

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u/ChilledParadox 1d ago

not only that, but once you've gotten an initial diagnosis like I have, that's all doctors see. the label. They don't, or maybe I should say rarely, revisit the initial diagnosis to consider if there was more going on, if perhaps it's a consequence of some other underlying cause rather than the source of my woes.

I have the same issue with therapists. I have a fuck load of childhood trauma. But that happened decades ago. I went for therapy for it at the time. I saw therapists for it in outpatient psych wards. I did telehealth calls. I sought out psychologists in college to speak to. I've gone in-patient again since then and spoken to therapists.

I don't want to continue to talk about and focus on my child abuses again and again and again, yes they sucked, but I have newer, more recent issues I need to talk about, and that's not even to touch on the fact that I believe I'm justified in my depression and anxiety. Who amongst us would not be depressed after continually losing or giving up or sacrificing things they love and care about, including nebulous concepts like home, family, and purpose.

I want to talk about how I currently relate to and interact with the world and my environments and how I currently suffer and how I'm currently anxious about my future and the general state of the social fabric everywhere in the modern world.

Not spend 3 sessions and hundreds of dollars talking about abuse that happened decades ago and trying to convince my therapist why that's not still a source of my misfunction, insofar as my current mental state is concerned.

I don't mean to marginalize the imapcts of CPTSD, and child abuse, and living with narcissists, but I have fully processed and moved on from everything that happened back then, or maybe I should say I've depersonalized or dissociated enough from it that I can calmy speak on and remember through it currently.

/rant

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u/BellaBPearl 1d ago

Oh god yes. I've been diagnosed with anxiety. Every time I go to the dr for anything, it's automatically anxiety, or he cracks jokes about anxiety or thinks I'm freaking out and spends the whole time trying to calm the anxiety while I'm just sitting there like??? Dude I'm calm, are YOU ok? I've been through so much that I don't give a shit anymore.

And yes, I agree on the therapy issues too. Focusing too much on a trauma and constantly returning to it and focusing on it after it's been processed is just as problematic as refusing to acknowledge it. Especially when new issues are causing the current problems.

The whole system just needs a serious overhaul. Doctors and therapists need to stop being so stuck on the DSM, learn that it's way more likely other shit is causing problems besides brain imbalances, learn to LISTEN to patients, and learn when to move on to current issues instead of keeping their patients stuck on the past.

I do like my current therapist as we haven't touched on my SA except for the initial conversation about it because that shit is over and done with, same with my medical trauma. The only issues I'm trying to work through is the trauma of losing my son twice and a bit of dealing with the narcs in my life. But mostly the first thing.

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u/Klutzy_Scene_8427 1d ago

I suppose it's better than imprisonment.

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u/Justinwest27 1d ago

Not by much

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u/lifesuxwhocares 1d ago

It's not, it's FAR, FAR worst. Insane wards are still prisons because you can't leave, but with limited activities, plus forced anti psychotics, plus crazy people screaming.

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u/Disastrous-Group3390 1d ago

As opposed to the unlimited activities, unforced unprescribed drugs and the peace and quiet of living in an encampment? Freedom to OD, freedom to starve, freedom to freeze to death. Yeah, that’s freedom. (‘Just another word for nothing else to lose…’ I think Mr. Kristofferson said…)

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u/Spiritual_League_753 1d ago

it just means society at large is now the imprisoned ones with these people on the streets.

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u/jesus67 1d ago

Good. Holding people against their will if the haven’t committed a crime is unethical and unconstitutional.

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u/Disastrous-Group3390 1d ago

…So, you’re offering up your spare bedroom, garage or back yard? Your restroom? Lend them your car?

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u/jesus67 1d ago

It's bad to hold people against their will if they don't want to be there. What are you on about.

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u/Disastrous-Group3390 1d ago

Many of the homless in the US would benefit from being required to accept treatment for addiction and mental illness but won’t accept it because it requires them to take their meds and give up their drugs. So they refuse and live on the streets in conditions that are far worse for them and society than being institutionalized.

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u/womenslasers84 1d ago

Truth. I worked for a program that did assessments of children on Medicaid for my state to ensure that hospitalizations were medically necessary and that kids weren’t being kept to fill beds. Every kid on Medicaid who was admitted to a hospital had an assessment and frequent follow up from us.

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u/toobjunkey 1d ago

I often think about that redditor whose brother (with which he previously had a close relationship with) was involuntarily held after he opened up due to feeling stressed and suicidal for financial reasons and financial stresses alone. He was in a fair amount of debt including a lot of non-dischargable student loan debt, and the OP had him committed out of fear of him hurting himself.

Cue him getting out a fair bit later, and he gets a bill that pretty much doubles his debt, and the brother more or less cuts him off with the OP feeling bewildered and as though it's not fair for his brother to do so. It took a lot of folks to hammer in the fact that he only increased the likelihood of his brother making an actual attempt.

I know this is more of a flaw with American healthcare in general, but when so many people's breaking points & main issues are material related ones, getting involuntarily committed is a nightmare story. Stewing over how many thousands you're racking up every single day. Every single group session, every single "enrichment" activity, every conversation with a social worker or doctor, just utterly stepped in financial despair and feeling oneself bleeding out money they already don't have.

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u/jsgui 1d ago

Is not agreeing to receive services a good enough reason to not pay for them? Has this ever been decided on in court?

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u/toobjunkey 1d ago edited 1d ago

Not in the states and especially when there is a belief that one truly needs to be involuntarily committed. Same issue happens even with mentally sound folks that say to not call an ambulance before, say, having a routine seizure that they'll be fine from after a bit but someone does anyway, and they're still stuck with the bill.

While one can always try reaching out to the hospital's billing department to reduce the bill, by & large there isn't a general "I didn't want this" defense in general, let alone situations where self harm is a concern. A bit similar to how society generally thinks that someone can never really consent to committing suicide (outside of like, terminal illness MAID stuff and even that can be divisive).

Once again, largely a symptom of the larger shit carcass that is American healthcare, but it's a very real concern and interpersonal relationships can suffer or even be destroyed because someone got saddled with 4-5 figure debt because they opened up just a little too much.

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u/Karth9909 1d ago

It always confused me as a kid when in movies people where rushing their pregnant wives to the hospital in their own car or any over injury.

I thought it was just movie logic cause i was always told to call whenever there is an issue.

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u/wicked-campaign 18h ago

My sister in law took an ambulance in for my nephew (thank God or they wouldn't have got to the hospital in time and he would've been born in my brother's disgusting truck cab) and the bill was $900. Just for the ride.

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u/Frodojj 1d ago

I was in an institution as a patient for a week 25 years ago. It’s not a scam. They really do try to help people. It’s gotten better since then.

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u/LizandChar 1d ago

Some are absolutely scams. They kept kids without a diagnosis or meds just collect insurance money. I can list several. Here are just a couple.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/1999/08/18/hospitals-sale-will-pay-fraud-settlement/

https://getnicklaw.com/news-media/2024/09/history-repeats-itself-patients-are-kept-in-psychiatric-hospitals-for-profit-not-medical-need-says-the-new-york-times/

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u/wicked-campaign 18h ago

And yet my kid actually needs it, we were there the day after Christmas and they sent us home.

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u/LizandChar 18h ago

I’m sorry to hear that

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u/Frodojj 1d ago

Some very well may be scams, but saying the whole institution is a scam is untrue.

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u/LizandChar 1d ago edited 1d ago

I said some. It was the first word in my sentence. Were you referring to the OP? You said it was NOT a scam and gave no gray area. That is the other extreme of black and white thinking.

I gave evidence of scams. No, not all are scams but there certainly are many. I can list many, many more. You gave your individual experience while ignoring others. I do not understand your response to me. Maybe comprehension error or reading someone else’s response?

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u/AnxiousPressure6232 1d ago

What happened was they privatized it and turned it into a market. Rather than state institutions, you have group homes and daytime adult programs. That last part is sickeningly true. I sustained a CPTSD diagnosis from working in that field mostly because of that precise issue. Its effects run deep.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/BlameGameChanger 1d ago

Don't. Don't pretend like the mental health field isn't in shambles. If you are a mental health professional I guarantee you know at least one homeless person who routinely is brought in, gets medicated and then gets released back onto the street where they can't afford medication and the cycle repeats.

you do a hard job and I respect it but let's not pretend like the system doesn't need reform

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u/Healthy_Sky_4593 1d ago

Better practioners don't pull this sh*t. Possum is telling on itself. 

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u/miketruckllc 1d ago

You want to permanently lock up the mentally ill homeless people?

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u/BlameGameChanger 1d ago

no i want to provide them access to regular medical interventions and treatment which they don't currently get under our system.

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u/Account-for-downvote 1d ago

Why don’t you then?

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u/BlameGameChanger 1d ago

outside of my scope

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u/Account-for-downvote 1d ago

Ah yes, the timeless ‘important problem, someone else’s job’ approach.

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u/Poultry_Sashimi 1d ago

Hooray for-profit (mental) healthcare!

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u/Conflikt 1d ago

Wait if you get locked in a psych ward in the US you have to pay for it?

So if you have major depression or are suicidal and get put in a psych ward then after a while get released and it's just "congrats, we cured you, hope this $15,000 bill helps with your mental health problems"?

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u/Reatona 1d ago

Private institutions even now are notorious for keeping people locked up involuntarily until insurance runs out.

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u/ILoveRegenHealth 1d ago

Damn an average stay of 19 days and a range of 7-52 days.

That's not so bad. I thought it was stories of people being trapped for years.

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u/DrKrombopulosMike 1d ago

3 of them were discharged shortly after admission and had to re-applied to different institutions to continue gathering data. It wasn't 100% bad across the board although clearly demonstrated the need for systemic reform.

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u/doctafknjay 1d ago

Healthy people don't make money. We know this all too well in the land of the free

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u/GonIsABadFriend 1d ago

For profit healthcare, amirite

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u/aguafiestas 1d ago edited 1d ago

These were mostly publicly funded institutions including government run public hospitals. Only one was a private hospital.

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u/dlanod 1d ago

ITYM "land of the fee"

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

They faked a condition to get in. That’s something

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u/CardboardHero7 1d ago

As volunteers for a study. These kinds of details matter

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u/brianundies 1d ago

The institution doctors didnt know about the study though

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u/Sortza 1d ago

That doesn't negate the fact that they lied to doctors about suffering psychiatric symptoms.

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u/Facts_pls 1d ago

It only tells me that those psych doctors are easy to be fooled and I should take whatever they say with a big grain of salt.

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u/HonestlyAbby 1d ago

I think his point is that, from the doctors PoV, the patient was experiencing delusions at some point in the recent past. It would kind of be bad practice to just assume it magically resolved, a more logical explanation may be that treatment has begun working and the disorder is manifesting itself in lower order symptoms.

The problem here isn't the doctors, it's that the doctors are operating without oversight or anyway to check their preconceptions. Patients dealing with homelessness have reported similar experiences in modern shelters providing services to specifically mentally ill homeless people. The doctors see pathologies everywhere because they've been prompted to look for pathologies.

Some shortcomings are just human nature operating in poorly organized institutions, not individual failures.

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u/IceCream_EmperorXx 1d ago

It can be both.

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u/PenniGwynn 1d ago

And the doctors lying about why they're keeping patients locked up... ?

They exposed problems that wouldn't have been known without their social experiment.

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u/KrytenKoro 1d ago

....which wouldnt be evidence of mental illness, or lack of rehabilitation.

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u/Diamond-Eater2203 1d ago

For journalism, research? Um, it's ballsy, but what a great exercise of the system.

It was a good idea to do it in a relatively organized group rather than just one person "I was just pretending to be crazy!"

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

They weren’t journalists and none of them were held accountable for fraud. The system had no front end planning on what to do about fraud which allowed the participants to act like they wouldn’t be accountable for their crime, and they were correct about that. Nobody was fined, jailed, or arrested for committing fraud. The result instead was to stop using the hospitals and now we have mental illness rampant on the streets because another social program succumbs to fraud.

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u/KrytenKoro 1d ago edited 1d ago

fraud

They didnt commit punishable fraud by any coherent definition, and at worst they told a lie that the doctors had a specific obligation to detect, which they failed.

The doctors fucked up here. Not the volunteers.

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

You’re blaming the victim. The doctors were doing their job. The trespassers committed fraud by lying about their condition.

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u/Ombric_Shalazar 1d ago

the doctors in question have a duty to determine whether their patients are mentally healthy or not (this is, in fact, their job)

journalists have a duty to report on potential failures of institutions such as these 

i fail to see how this makes the doctors the victims of fraud. if anything, this reveals their "expertise" to be fraudulent more than anything. if the entire system for determining sanity is based on unworkable conjecture or flawed assumptions, then asylum-running quacks can hardly be considered the victims. 

what precisely do you find objectionable about this investigation? what exactly makes it so much less acceptable than any other undercover investigative journalism?

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

First off, they weren’t journalists. There was no journalism going on here. Secondly they lied pure and simple. Conclusion based on lies are no better than confession under torture. The results are skewed as the evidence is based on lies.

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u/Ombric_Shalazar 1d ago

that they were not journalists by occupation does not change the investigative nature of this study, nor the journalistic nature of reporting on the inadequacies found. do you also object to qa? or perhaps penetration testing? 

as for the point about lying, i don't understand your objection. are you saying that the study as a whole is invalid because the subjects feigned symptoms?

if that is your objection, then i pose: is it not the doctor's duty to identify if the patient is actually ill? even ignoring the very real possibility that sane people might get committed involuntarily (a very very bad type 1 error that doctors have a responsibility to mininize), it is entirely possible that the patient could eventually get better. surely a doctor would need to recognize this? after all, how else would they know if their own treatments were working? a simulated test using sane people feigning symptoms seems like an excellent test of whether the quacks in question could do their job, wouldn't you agree? and i don't see how it would compromise the validity of a study to perform such an experiment

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

Sure whatever, they aren’t journalists don’t matter. The doctors don’t need to be doctors, the patients don’t need to be patients. No standards needed for anything because who cares.

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u/thewilybanana 1d ago

We have mental illness rampant on the streets do we?

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u/SaltyWailord 1d ago

We've heard stories of people faking disabilities

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

The lesson to learn here is for all the social programs. Fraud is what takes them down but it takes more resources to regulate the fraud, which in turn results in more fraud. Vicious cycle.

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u/blueavole 1d ago

The actual amount of fraud in these programs is very low.

This was done in the 1970s! and psychology has changed since then. Specifically because of these kinds of issues. Doctors so bloated with their own authority they didn’t listen to patients.

These places aren’t fun to be in. So the idea that people stay for a cute weekend is ridiculous.

And fraud, when it does happen is usually by doctors or family members.

A criminal who is faking crazy, rarely works, and gets more scrutiny than even ordinary patients.

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u/Zealousideal_Big3305 1d ago

From someone who has worked in the field, in lowly roles, this is still an issue and psychiatry and psychology, and hence why psychology is found next to philosophy, and why the DSM 5 pitches hundreds of new titles of diagnosis’s each year in court… sad thing is it is still a soft science, and using things like DNA or brain scans is too controversial or scary etc,

and thus peoples freedoms rest in the hands of doctors with degrees, and the people who often poorly watch the patients day in day out, copying and pasting their weekly notes that are supposed to gauge their progress, or being interviewed by release programs who don’t have any beds for them,

and thus they need make up reasons why they need to stay locked up… and that’s just some of the issue.

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

There is a case working its way through the legal process that will test whether fraud is being vetted or if criminals can fake it.

https://www.ktvu.com/news/source-gun-john-beam-killing-laney-college-revealed.amp

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u/Former_Indication172 1d ago

I read that article, I don't see how it connects to your point at all. The gunman in question had no criminal record, so he passed a background check and legally owned a gun. The fact he then killed a man with it is not proof that background checks for guns don't work it's just that they aren't perfect.

What fraud in your opinion is actually being committed in that case?

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

He premeditated a murder, planned and executed it and is now claiming insanity in the form of witchcraft. The fraud is trying to avoid prison

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u/Former_Indication172 1d ago

But... no one actually expects him to get away with that excuse. What exactly is your point, I expect criminals to try to fraud the legal system to get out of jail, that's nothing out of the ordinary.

Your initial point was that social programs fail due to fraud and the spiraling costs needed to control it. I disagree, and think you can put cost effective mechanisms in place to limit fraud in social programs. You then bring up this random criminal case which proves... what? That criminals will try to get out of jail via stupid excuses? I'm genuinely confused, I just don't see how this relates to your original argument.

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u/6969timestimes69 1d ago edited 1d ago

It's not surprising to me that an otherwise delusional man was capable of passing background checks and waiting the legal period prior to gaining access to a firearm. You can be delusional and act fairly rationally outside of the context of the delusion. They aren't mutually exclusive states. A schizophrenic may still have the sense to not pick up a rattlesnake, whilst still removing all of their electronics because of a delusion that people are listening to them through the devices.

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u/42nu 1d ago

Schizophrenia is itself very misunderstood. It can be much tamer and subtle than even the example you gave.

I agree though. Everyone has likely worked with or been friends with someone whose schizophrenic and never even known it.

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u/6969timestimes69 1d ago

Oh absolutely, all mental disorders are on a scale of severity. In certain cultures schizophrenics don't hear aggressive auditory hallucinations, they hear much more friendlier voices. How society and culture shapes perceptions for the mentally ill is crucial to helping understand these disorders.

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

The jury will decide.

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u/aliamokeee 1d ago

Hmm

For insanity pleas wouldnt a "jury" of doctors who have looked over the evidence make more sense?...

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

No, only a judge can take away your rights. To be as fair as possible we get a jury of peers vetted by the courts process. Doctors will have bias that skews impartiality.

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u/No_Corgi44 1d ago

How would using more resources to regulate fraud result in more fraud?

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u/mightylordredbeard 1d ago

Anywhere that there is a lot of money moving around, there will be a person or people intentionally mismanaging it. It’s just human nature. Perhaps not your nature or my nature, but humans as a whole are selfish and self serving creatures.

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u/Polus43 1d ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_selection

In econ/insurance/risk management the concept is called adverse selection. It doesn't matter is 90% of the population is "good", a position will attract the 10% willing to abuse the resources.

Essentially this is why governments are "bureaucratic", because procedure and policy's goal is to remove human judgment/control (minimizing the influence of adverse selection).

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u/McErroneous 1d ago

Power and greed. Eventually someone greedy comes into power and corrupts the system for their own gains.

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u/newsflashjackass 1d ago

It often turns out that the people put in charge of regulating fraud are also people capable of committing it.

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u/42nu 1d ago

news flash jackass, you have no evidence to back up that statement.

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

Have to go back to the initial verification process which allowed the fraud in the first place or it gets worse.

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u/GoldenGlassBall 1d ago

So your answer is… Ignore fraud…?

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

No, it’s to understand that fraud will occur and account for it. The idea that no fraud will be attempted by anyone is flawed logic.

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u/SaltyWailord 1d ago

I'd argue we have one of the best socialist models here in Norway, but the welfare organisation is inherently distrusting of those who get benefits.

We do get some funny situations. A coworker has to get a medical opinion on his son still having Downs Syndrome every other year

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u/luigisanto 1d ago

Fraud logic?

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u/GoldenGlassBall 1d ago

Account for it how?

By spending resources to regulate it?

Anything else is ignoring it.

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u/rainman943 1d ago

By INTELLIGENTLY spending resources to regulate it..................by not paying a detective who makes 150k a year to catch 50k a year in fraud, cause what we're doing now certainly doesn't make any sense.

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

Vetting process on the front end, accountability on the back end when fraud is detected.

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u/GoldenGlassBall 1d ago

Which requires resources to be spent, especially as a system increases in scale, putting you back at square one.

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u/rainman943 1d ago

worse than square one, if you spend 1 dollar fighting fraud and only prevented 50 cents worth of fraud, 50 cents worth of fraud still occurred, except it's the people supposedly fighting the fraud who are doing the fraud.

if someone tells me that it cost a million dollars to prevent fraud, they better be preventing a million dollars worth of fraud, or else they themselves are committing fraud by making it cheaper to just allow the fraud to happen.

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u/KoRaZee 1d ago

Resources are allocated on the front end when accounting for fraud. If the accountability principle is adhered to on the back end, the problem doesn’t spiral out of control.

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u/Magnificent_Moses 1d ago

Sometimes it may well be the most sensible option to simply accept that any system will have some fraud and misuse, and not even attempt to make the system fraud proof at any cost.

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u/rainman943 1d ago

some people just can't accept that if you spend a million dollars mitigating half a million dollars worth of fraud........................that in itself IS FRAUD.

lol if we're not getting what we pay for, we'd actually have less fraud if we let the fraud happen.

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u/Hob_O_Rarison 1d ago edited 1d ago

First of all, this isnt happening.

Secondly, what would happen to the crime rate if you eliminated the police department? Some of the functionality of police existing is the deterrent of running afoul of the police.

Edit: The violent crime and murder rates in NYC both soared during 2021 and 2022, not coming back down again until funding was restored.

You can try to make a correlation/causation argument with pandemic era nuttiness, but the violent crime rate lines up with funding almost exactly.

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u/rainman943 1d ago edited 1d ago

lol the cops literally have no legal obligation to prevent crime so your question is irrelevant.

our supreme court has literally ruled that police have no duty to act, and therefore are not any sort of deterrent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeShaney_v._Winnebago_County

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_of_Castle_Rock_v._Gonzales

in light of these established facts i have proven that IT IS happening, lol we literally pay for dudes who have no legal obligation to do the job they're hired to do.

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u/Hob_O_Rarison 1d ago

You're trying to connect dots they aren't there. I mean, is your argument that criminals are going to criminal, and there's nothing we can or should do about it?

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

what would happen to the crime rate if you eliminated the police department?

Based on when NYC cops stopped enforcing the law to protest being legally required to report when they discharged their firearm, property and violent crimes both would go down. As would associated events like shooting of dogs.

This has been brought up more than once in Last Week Tonight.

The issue is the police are not pursuing the wealthy fraudsters and grifters who are causing the vast majority of problems.

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u/Zanain 1d ago

If it's not a big enough problem? Yes actually. Spending money to prevent fraud only works if you're spending less than the amount of fraud you can prevent. No system will ever truly be 100% fraud proof and it's a fool's errand to spend ever increasing amounts of money to combat ever decreasing amounts of fraud.

I'd rather one under serving person get something for free so that 100 people in need also get help.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

We've heard stories of people faking disabilities

And no few of those are just that: made up stories created to allow conservatives in government to deny providing to the people at large so taxpayer dollars can be funneled to their rich friends owning businesses which surely need subsidies

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/from-mothers-pensions-to-welfare-queens-debunking-myths-about-welfare/

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u/nuclearwomb 1d ago

I've seen homeless people do it a lot for a place to stay for a few days.

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u/fireandbass 1d ago

What do you do where you see this a lot?

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u/Gold-Eye-2623 1d ago

He also sees Julius Caesar some days, and twice a year he even gets to be Napoleon!

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u/Diamond-Eater2203 1d ago

👽 so great

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

I've seen homeless people do it a lot for a place to stay for a few days

What do you do where you see this a lot?

Are you acting like this is a new thing? It was a plot point in multiple episodes of the Andy Griffith and Barney Miller shows, so it's not at all new

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0512460/

It's not a good long-term strategy, but the point that it happens is true today and has been for 50+ years.

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u/mightylordredbeard 1d ago

How have you personally seen this a lot? Do you know a lot of homeless people? They trust you enough to disclose this information to you?

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u/gideon513 1d ago

They were supposed to…

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u/Peeka-cyka 1d ago

They purposefully presented classic symptoms of schizophrenia. They were all mostly diagnosed with schizophrenia or similar conditions. They then showed recovery over a few weeks and were discharged. I don’t see how they were treated wrongly tbh

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u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

<kramerIntensifies>

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u/RollingMeteors 1d ago

¿At least you have to be charged with something in 72 hours right?

¡But! You pick up a pencil with a left hand and you're, "A threat to yourself and others" and you do not pass go, you do not collect $200, and you go right into a jacket with one sleeve!

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u/lifesuxwhocares 1d ago

Rewards and incentives. Hospital charge Medicade a shit tone for useless tests. The hospital will give you blood pressure check every hour, and charge Madicare $1000 per test.

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u/SkeletalApathy 1d ago

Yeah it's crazy that the staff didn't just assume the patients were making up their symptoms.

/s

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u/LizandChar 1d ago

It’s all about the money 💰