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Comment by zd4akaq85a | Hacker News Reader

Florida's GDP is $748B. Suppose 1 in 300 people in the state are mentally ill enough at a given time to warrant living in a mental hospital. If that costs $1B, about half as much of the economy would be spent on them (per capita), compared to the general population. Seems very reasonable to me, without any more specific numbers to go on.

To throw out another number for comparison, medicare and medicaid together cost about $50B / year in the state.

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Assuming your numbers government spends $15k for every 1 of those 300 people. That number seems pretty high.

The Tampa Bay investigation's violence refers to violence in the hospitals itself and not the general violence in society. For 13.5K per year you might reduce the hospital staff by 10% but that is unlikely to result into chaos that the report seems to suggest.

How cheap do you think room, board, and medical care should be?

By the way, for comparison, Medicare spends $10k/year per beneficiary in Florida.

> about half as much of the economy would be spent on them (per capita), compared to the general population

Your math only works if mentally ill people receive no other services from the state whatsoever. Assuming the mental hospitals receive supplies by road, this is not true.

Ok, sure, you can add in roads and it will change the numbers in a small way that will be irrelevant to the thread. You can spend an infinite amount of time making rough estimates more accurate, if that's what you're into.

No I think it's very relevant to the thread. You have not accounted for any other services that people receiving mental health care receive from the state at all. You're ignoring most of the state's spending. Your estimate is not just rough; it can't possibly be anywhere near the mark.

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