us mental health parity bill

bush signed it into law on friday
source: wall street journal....
it was part of the 'pork' that the senate included in the bank bailout the second time around. bush had no choice.
pi

I wonder if the fact that insurers have to support mental health services will prompt them to push for better outcomes in those services...

I wouldn't call something that ends discrimination against people with a mental disorder "pork." I'd call it finally people getting fairness from an unfair system.

Government tried to fix insurance companies' discriminatory practices against people with a mental illness in 1996 bill, but insurance companies and employers found ways around it. This closes those loopholes once and for all and requires insurance companies to stop treating mental disorders as second-class conditions.

Our coverage of this bill is here (you do know we produce daily mental health news, no?):

http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/10...qual/3069.html

Pachyderm, I'd argue the same for most medical procedures. You might be surprised at the lack of research into many of them (and their subsequent outcomes). I'd even argue that most psychological techniques, such as CBT, are far better studied than most surgical techniques, even those in widespread use.

DocJohn

Interesting!

Folks, did you know that DocJohn has 2,307 Psych Central Friends?!

From what I understand, it's actually the Wellstone Memorial Bill, the mental health parity bill, that was the bill that contained the bail-out. Parity wasn't added as "pork" or "sweeteners", the bill they used was actually the parity bill, and they added all the "rescue" stuff to it. I'm told this was because any stand-alone spending bills have to originate in the House of Representatives. If the Senate wants to originate a spending bill, they have to do as they did with this and add it via amendments to an existing bill. Before all the economic hell broke loose, parity was as far on the front-burner as it's ever been, so perhaps that's why they used the Paul Wellstone Memorial Equity and Addiction Act. While I'm very pleased that parity has FINALLY passed, and I'm looking forward to seeing improvements in my own insurance coverage, I can't help but shake my head in wonder at how this finally came to be. I kind of wonder what the late Senator Wellstone would think of this.

gg

While I agree that it's about time, it disgusts me that things have to be "tagged on"--economic reform has nothing to do with this and they should each be treated seperately.

I totally agree, it is as if we are an after thought! However, better late than NEVER!

TJ

I'm glad that this IS how the system WILL work for us at times. And I agree, this is NOT PORK.

http://www.projo.com/news/content/PA...2.160965a.html

Journal Washington Bureau WASHINGTON — Two years ago last May, Jim Ramstad, a veteran congressman from the suburbs of Minneapolis-St. Paul, paid a quiet visit on a colleague whose drug abuse –– plus a harshly publicized car crash on Capitol Hill –– had just landed him in rehab at Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic.
What drove the 60-year-old Republican to pay respects to Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy –– a prominent, younger Democrat whom he did not know very well –– was the memory of his own wake-up call in a Sioux Falls, S.D., jail cell almost 25 years earlier. As Ramstad has said thousands of times to anyone who will listen to his message about alcoholism and drug addiction, “I am living proof that treatment works.”
On Friday their partnership in recovery bore fruit that Kennedy and Ramstad could hardly have imagined that spring day at the treatment center. Their bill to advance medical coverage for millions of the addicted and mentally ill was enacted after congressional action as dramatic as it was improbable.
The Kennedy-Ramstad bill, requiring insurers to cover mental illness on a par with physical illness, was a last-minute attachment to the $700-billion financial rescue that passed the House on a 263-to-171 vote. President Bush promptly signed it into law.

Yep, they had to add parity (and other stuff) into the House bill, which originated as a stand-alone spending bill, in order to make it match the Senate bill so that it could go to Bush for signing ASAP instead of the differences getting hashed out in committee. If only it were as simple as Schoolhouse Rock made it seem. Gosh I miss that show. Can't recite the Preamble without singing it.

gg

be fair to me. i didn't say it's pork. what i did say is it's 'pork.' I am using the conventional terminology of the mainstream mass media about the extra monies added to the wall street banker's rescue plan to solve the liquidity crisis.
It is a time to be incredibly happy for our community. I still have to wonder if civil servants are exempt from this health benefit as congress often does such acts when regulating private enterprises.
I don't know when this law takes effect either.
Still this is a real step forward for all of us. Who knows, maybe psychoanalysts can make a living doing psychoanalysis again instead of what they do now?
-pi