Maggie's Farm

Meta,

I'm missing something. I can't find the post you're referring to. The link goes to a video about Tocqueville.

Or is that it?

I can't speak for psychiatrists, but if we're talking about psychology, your explanation is false.

First, most psychologists are not clinicians; they are academics. They aren't paid by government agencies or government insurance. But let's assume that you're talking about clinicians when you lump psychologists together with psychiatrists.

Those of us who earn our livelihood as clinicians largely eschew Medicare and Medicaid because there is no money in it. I don't even have a Medicare number, but I'm not losing out on much money. None of my friends take Medicare/Medicaid either.

Reimbursement for talk therapy is poor and retirees are not big consumers of psychotherapy. Likewise, the disabled and chronically mentally ill (Medicaid patients) are not big consumers of psychotherapy. Psychotherapy fees are, for the most part, paid out of pocket by working parents of children and younger to middle age adults who are in the middle income and higher income brackets.

Government agencies that do provide counseling are almost always staffed by social workers or the equivalent master's level providers--not psychologists.

Private health insurance reimbursement is unreliable and relatively paltry for psychotherapy services. So, these days, far less than half of a typical clinician's income is derived from insurance reimbursement.

Most clinical psychologists cobble a living together doing several jobs. My practice isn't unusual. I see private patients with maybe 15% of fees reimbursed by private insurance and the rest paid out of pocket. I also do private testing and assessment contracts with organizations that are not government-funded in any way. I'm also part-time on a private university faculty (a school that does not receive a penny in government funding).

I would grant that liberals are over-represented among psychologists when compared with the general population, but not when compared with our own demographic group. --mostly white people with PhD's, more women than men, with a heavier concentration living in blue states and densely populated areas.

That said, we are not as liberal of a group as many people outside the profession seem to assume.

When I was a graduate student, I was somewhat unusual as a hard core libertarian leaning conservative--although I was far from alone in my political bent. But there were probably many more liberals than conservatives among the students. That isn't unusual for graduate students and keep in mind this was before any of us were earning an income as clinicians. I should also mention that my politics was no problem in graduate school. We didn't sit around talking politics. Our classes were intense as was our clinical training. I didn't know the politics of any of my professors except for the 'diversity' class professor and that was a tiny part of our education--a class that virtually no one took seriously--basically a blow off that, I must confess, we all ridiculed because it lacked the academic rigor to which we were accustomed.

What I've also noticed is that since graduate school, I would say that my peers have become much more conservative as a group. Why? That's what usually happens to people when they get older, start families (even lesbian families), worry about things like crime, personal and family stability and retirement.

Meta,

You didn't sound stupid. I could see that you two were quoting and reacting to something I couldn't find.