For Many, Medicaid Provides The Only Route To Mental Health Care
The Senate's proposed rollback of the Medicaid expansion could cut off mental health benefits to many people who have gotten care for the first time as a result of the Affordable Care Act.
It was about a year ago that Ornella Mouketou walked into the emergency room at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., and told them she wanted to end her life.
She was in her early 20s, unemployed and depressed.
"I was just walking around endlessly. I was walking around parks, and I was just crying all the time," she says. "It was like an empty black hole."
She spent a few days, a mental health agency. That person followed up after she went home and is still in touch with her now.
