Hacker News Reader

> If this fine remains, and Meta pays out to the affected parties

Did you even read the first line of the article? "A New Mexico court has ordered Meta ... to pay $567m into a fund aimed at redressing adverse mental health impacts". It does NOT go to the children's purses. There's also a fine, which --as fines do-- goes to the state. Not to the individual children.

> outsized

Are you arguing it should be less?

View on HN

It should be honest that “redressing adverse mental health impacts” is code for “more sweet government jobs”.

As critical as I am of NM, I don’t know that this is true. The state has been funding mental healthcare for 2+ years out of gross receipts revenue. A large part of this goes to Medicaid recipients - NM is one of the highest paying states for Medicaid providers, at least for mental health. The money from this may very well go into a public coffer used for similar purposes, ultimately paying out to private providers while mostly bypassing our broken health insurance system.

I do question whether therapy services and the like are the best use of public funds for the people of NM. A lot of the state’s problems stem from a lack of economic opportunities, therapy isn’t going to help that. The state also carries a heavy burden of generational trauma which this could go some ways towards addressing, I suppose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com