I’m getting really bored reading the endless and myriad complaints about managed care that Psychiatric News is publishing. It’s getting out of hand. The insurance industry is totalitarian and omnipotent and will crush anyone who stands in the way of its exploiting human suffering to make money. It’s getting worse and worse no matter what propaganda our deluded leaders feed us. It’s futile and silly to indulge in this infantile wailing, whining, and gnashing of teeth.

The victimized patient and the castrated psychiatrist can’t get their acts together to organize an offensive to pressure the insurance monster and the photo-op politicians to change the mess. Besides, the insurance industry has bought most of the greedy politicians and has them in its pockets, and all they do is posture and make empty promises.

Solutions? Accept the slavery to managed care and adapt to the less-than-ideal treatments they dictate, make a living without working yourself to death for the same money you earned in the good old days, cover your flanks, plant roses, and be grateful that you now have the good sense not to go into psychiatry again in your next reincarnation.

Edward W. Hughes, M.D.

Springfield, Mass.