A buck twenty a year is less than many govt programs take, and for actually a good cause. We do need systemic mental health treatment.
Ok
Sounds good, I would just request a guarantee it stays that amount for a set period of time and cannot be raised without a process requiring public comment.
That sounds like a good deal. Too bad the phone companies can’t kick in a little money also to help, but we understand, those yachts aren’t going to luxuriate themselves.
Totally ok with this
Sounds fine- signed, Ohio resident
I’d pay a dollar a month to save lives, I’ve paid more for less return from the government.
Worth it.
Might as well make it national, signed
Wait, what costs does Ohio have? All 988 took to implement was a simple routing command in a switch that maps to the suicide hotline in a routing table using a 3 digit code, before getting sent down the same circuit as a direct dial to the hotline would be. It took 15 minutes to program in when I did a couple of years ago. Instead of you dialing the hotline, your ISP maps 988 to that same number. Unless they added a requirement for phase 2 location data, line with 911, even that can be quickly handled. I did change teams since implementing this, so requirements could’ve changed. The only thing I could see costing Ohio is if for some reason they created new T1s to transport the calls instead of using existing T1s.
like the state doesn’t get enough federal money to cover such costs?
Worth it.
This is how government is supposed to work. I wish everything were this simple. No middlemen, no special interests. Just a problem and a feasible, tolerable solution. Almost like the good ol days…
Hell, add a fucking dollar, I’d be happy to pay $12 a year to support this service.
Waiting for a Pro-Lifer to take issue with a “woke” company trying to take money that they are not supposed to take.
Honestly, I’d pay that. It’s a with while thing.
Does anyone actually care about this???
Like, we’re talking about getting rid of penny because it’s so worthless. And GOP wants us to be outraged over 10 cents a month?
My hometown is so small that when they rolled this out they had to put out waves and waves of PSAs letting people know that they’d have to start dialing the area code every time they make a call as a result of 988 rolling out. The number of people who were outraged at the thought of having to tap three extra buttons was gross.
Money well spent
I call BS. If you say no it’s “OhHHhH you can’t pay *10* cents to prevent suicide?!🙄 disgusting” something tells me your internet/phone company already has way more than enough money to pay these workers
This is the kind of slow news day I am here for. Yes, please, add it to our bills. Also, thanks to all the 988 operators for doing awesome work.
watch conservatives try to block it and maybe even argue that people need to just not be so sad.
Charging the poor while cutting tax for the rich and corporations.
And then give it to the crisis centers and towards mental health care for those who need it?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
I propose we raise it to 20 just to be sure and maybe add a treat budget for the people working the line.
as someone whose called twice in the last 80 days i’d say go for it, people need it more than you think
Sounds so cheap I wonder why they need to do it at all, why complicate the funding process?
GDPR non-compliance cuts off the website for me, but how much is that, $10 million annually? Out of $86 000 million in the budget?
I’m good with this.
First thought is, “Okay good use of our tax money, awesome.”
Then I think about how much this would actually raise and wonder how much the suicide prevention hotline costs to run. Again, not upset, just curious. Especially when the state decreased the original $8-million budget to ~$3.5-million after receiving $20-million from the federal gov to support the creation of the program.
Roughly 9 million people over the age of 18 in Ohio. Let’s say 7.6-million at least have a phone bill. Couldn’t find hard #’s to back it up, but the average adult smartphone adoption rate in the US is 85%.
So that’s approx. $9+ million additional taxpayer dollars per year. Which is on top of the $45-million the state allocated to the program over the next 2-years.
In 2022 the hotline received roughly 144,000 calls/texts. That’s roughly 400 per day.
Let’s say 1-person can make a maximum of 12 appropriate and helpful call/text sessions during an 8-hour shift. That’s approx. 34 people needed per day to take all of the calls. Obviously this will fluctuate, and they should be overstaffed to ensure greater care, but I’m working with rough #’s and what I can find in public records.
Average call center hourly wage at the Ohio suicide prevention is $20. That equates to under $2-million in wages per year to be fully staffed per last years #’s.
Leaving the $45-million state allocated funds + the extra $7-million taxpayer raised after base wages are removed in just the first year.
Obviously there are other costs than simply staffing, however, this is not a new program and it has 2-years of infrastructure in place already to build on.
Please don’t hear what I’m not saying, it’s a good cause, I think this is a better way to spend money than many other avenues. But where is the surplus funding for this going in 5-years?
Just thought it’d be interesting to look a little deeper at the #’s, didn’t mean to infer anything about the efficacy or importance of something like this. It’s late, and my brain hurts now from all the info I’ve been looking up.
The idea of the suicide hotline is great, but in practice I’ve only seen it used as a justification for police to ransack your house.
31 comments
A buck twenty a year is less than many govt programs take, and for actually a good cause. We do need systemic mental health treatment.
Ok
Sounds good, I would just request a guarantee it stays that amount for a set period of time and cannot be raised without a process requiring public comment.
That sounds like a good deal. Too bad the phone companies can’t kick in a little money also to help, but we understand, those yachts aren’t going to luxuriate themselves.
Totally ok with this
Sounds fine- signed, Ohio resident
I’d pay a dollar a month to save lives, I’ve paid more for less return from the government.
Worth it.
Might as well make it national, signed
Wait, what costs does Ohio have? All 988 took to implement was a simple routing command in a switch that maps to the suicide hotline in a routing table using a 3 digit code, before getting sent down the same circuit as a direct dial to the hotline would be. It took 15 minutes to program in when I did a couple of years ago. Instead of you dialing the hotline, your ISP maps 988 to that same number. Unless they added a requirement for phase 2 location data, line with 911, even that can be quickly handled. I did change teams since implementing this, so requirements could’ve changed. The only thing I could see costing Ohio is if for some reason they created new T1s to transport the calls instead of using existing T1s.
like the state doesn’t get enough federal money to cover such costs?
Worth it.
This is how government is supposed to work. I wish everything were this simple. No middlemen, no special interests. Just a problem and a feasible, tolerable solution. Almost like the good ol days…
Hell, add a fucking dollar, I’d be happy to pay $12 a year to support this service.
Waiting for a Pro-Lifer to take issue with a “woke” company trying to take money that they are not supposed to take.
Honestly, I’d pay that. It’s a with while thing.
Does anyone actually care about this???
Like, we’re talking about getting rid of penny because it’s so worthless. And GOP wants us to be outraged over 10 cents a month?
My hometown is so small that when they rolled this out they had to put out waves and waves of PSAs letting people know that they’d have to start dialing the area code every time they make a call as a result of 988 rolling out. The number of people who were outraged at the thought of having to tap three extra buttons was gross.
Money well spent
I call BS. If you say no it’s “OhHHhH you can’t pay *10* cents to prevent suicide?!🙄 disgusting” something tells me your internet/phone company already has way more than enough money to pay these workers
This is the kind of slow news day I am here for. Yes, please, add it to our bills. Also, thanks to all the 988 operators for doing awesome work.
watch conservatives try to block it and maybe even argue that people need to just not be so sad.
Charging the poor while cutting tax for the rich and corporations.
And then give it to the crisis centers and towards mental health care for those who need it?
Yeah, didn’t think so.
I propose we raise it to 20 just to be sure and maybe add a treat budget for the people working the line.
as someone whose called twice in the last 80 days i’d say go for it, people need it more than you think
Sounds so cheap I wonder why they need to do it at all, why complicate the funding process?
GDPR non-compliance cuts off the website for me, but how much is that, $10 million annually? Out of $86 000 million in the budget?
I’m good with this.
First thought is, “Okay good use of our tax money, awesome.”
Then I think about how much this would actually raise and wonder how much the suicide prevention hotline costs to run. Again, not upset, just curious. Especially when the state decreased the original $8-million budget to ~$3.5-million after receiving $20-million from the federal gov to support the creation of the program.
Roughly 9 million people over the age of 18 in Ohio. Let’s say 7.6-million at least have a phone bill. Couldn’t find hard #’s to back it up, but the average adult smartphone adoption rate in the US is 85%.
So that’s approx. $9+ million additional taxpayer dollars per year. Which is on top of the $45-million the state allocated to the program over the next 2-years.
In 2022 the hotline received roughly 144,000 calls/texts. That’s roughly 400 per day.
Let’s say 1-person can make a maximum of 12 appropriate and helpful call/text sessions during an 8-hour shift. That’s approx. 34 people needed per day to take all of the calls. Obviously this will fluctuate, and they should be overstaffed to ensure greater care, but I’m working with rough #’s and what I can find in public records.
Average call center hourly wage at the Ohio suicide prevention is $20. That equates to under $2-million in wages per year to be fully staffed per last years #’s.
Leaving the $45-million state allocated funds + the extra $7-million taxpayer raised after base wages are removed in just the first year.
Obviously there are other costs than simply staffing, however, this is not a new program and it has 2-years of infrastructure in place already to build on.
Please don’t hear what I’m not saying, it’s a good cause, I think this is a better way to spend money than many other avenues. But where is the surplus funding for this going in 5-years?
Just thought it’d be interesting to look a little deeper at the #’s, didn’t mean to infer anything about the efficacy or importance of something like this. It’s late, and my brain hurts now from all the info I’ve been looking up.
The idea of the suicide hotline is great, but in practice I’ve only seen it used as a justification for police to ransack your house.
Yes. And?
No thank you.