It’s a situation like congressmen who vote for a budget, the take a “principled” stand to block the debt limit. Or taking the Bill Clinton’s “fundamentally changing welfare forever”, by pushing recipients to Social Security Disabilty, and off of the federal and state government’s balance sheet.

In the case of mental hospitals, the closures were supposed to be replaced with community based care, but of course Medicaid and Medicare funding was not set to meet demand.