Maggie's Farm

The mental health industry has a vested financial interest in classifying normal emotions as diseases. Once something is "officially" identified as a disease (by the people who stand to benefit financially), insurance companies are forced (by government decree) to pay for "treatments".

Worse yet, because insurance companies MUST cover and pay for these "conditions", the mental health industry has a great incentive to raise prices, invent costly therapies, and to label whatever complaint you have as something that fits into a category listed in the DSM.

Much of this nonsense would be eliminated if government removed itself entirely from the insurance picture and people were forced to pick their own menu of benefits AND pay for the insurance themselves. Once people realized the enormous cost (and wealth transfer), prices would reach their true market equilibrium and the crooks the cook up the DSM would have no incentive to label everything as a disease. The cost of a policy that covered "real" psychiatric illness (as opposed to normal emotions, etc.) would be much less than one that covers every conceivable human foible.