This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, January 24th,

2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

During the pandemic, access to mental health care,

as with other kinds of health care,

cratered.

To prevent some of the predictable fallout, many argue

it's time to expand the ranks of prescribing psychologists. Beth Ron Rimmer is a clinical psychologist

and a prescribing psychologist.

We spoke earlier this month at the Cato Institute's State Health Policy Summit.

This is the first of two conversations on the subject.

There were tremendous problems before the pandemic. We had communities who were

waiting for health care, comprehensive, integrated health care, prescriptive

health care, fourcriptive health care,

for six, eight, 10 months at a time.

They, particularly people who couldn't, who weren't ambulatory, people who were so seriously

ill they couldn't get to a clinic, couldn't get to a physician, people living in rural areas with no transportation, people in urban areas who couldn't, who couldn't,

didn't have any resources to get on a bottle or get into a metro train to be able to get to a

doctor's office. And presumably other people who simply had to wait many months

to get appointments.

And other people in well-to-do communities who were on six-month, nine-month wait lists.

And this is what you say, prescriptive care, you're talking about a physician, a prescription and sending them off to a pharmacy to pick it up to ameliorate some problem that they're having.

...