Articles By Jeffrey Junig

Millions of people become addicted to pain pills through no fault of their own. In their rush to see more patients, doctors take the easy path of prescribing pain medicine, often inappropriately, and then blame the patient when inevitable tolerance and dependence develop. Now there is a breakthrough treatment to help those addicted to pain pills.

Is all learning beneficial? Can the mind make positive use of most of our life experiences? A corollary to ‘once learned, some things cannot be unlearned’ is that regarding personality, ‘we are what we eat’. Our experiences remain within us, and color everything that we see and do going forward.

The United States tax code tries to accomplish two things at once: raising revenue, and redistributing wealth. I suggest that we simplify things by replacing it with two systems, each designed to do only one thing. One agency could raise revenue, and the other could make everything fair. I wrote this letter to offer the suggestion to the current House Speaker.

Payments for medical illnesses by insurers vary dramatically between mental health and other conditions. The differences in reimbursement are most dramatic when one compares mental health care to procedural specialties. The difference in pay schedules cannot be accounted for by differences in stress, time, risk, or years of training required by the specialty. Rather, the payment discrepancies are due to the low value placed on mental health services by society.