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Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3230
Registered: 01-2005
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, October 07, 2008 - 11:19 am: | 
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WASHINGTON — More than one-third of all Americans will soon receive better insurance coverage for mental health treatments because of a new law that, for the first time, requires equal coverage of mental and physical illnesses.
The requirement, included in the economic bailout bill that President Bush signed on Friday, is the result of 12 years of passionate advocacy by friends and relatives of people with mental illness and addiction disorders. They described the new law as a milestone in the quest for civil rights, an effort to end insurance discrimination and to reduce the stigma of mental illness.
Most employers and group health plans provide less coverage for mental health care than for the treatment of physical conditions like cancer, heart disease or broken bones. They will need to adjust their benefits to comply with the new law, which requires equivalence, or parity, in the coverage.
For decades, insurers have set higher co-payments and deductibles and stricter limits on treatment for addiction and mental illnesses.
By wiping away such restrictions, doctors said, the new law will make it easier for people to obtain treatment for a wide range of conditions, including depression, autism, schizophrenia, eating disorders and alcohol and drug abuse.
...The goal of mental health parity once seemed politically unrealistic but gained widespread support for several reasons:
¶Researchers have found biological causes and effective treatments for numerous mental illnesses.
¶A number of companies now specialize in managing mental health benefits, making the costs to insurers and employers more affordable. The law allows these companies to continue managing benefits.
¶Employers have found that productivity tends to increase after workers are treated for mental illnesses and drug or alcohol dependence. Such treatments can reduce the number of lost work days.
¶The stigma of mental illness may have faded as people see members of the armed forces returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with serious mental problems.
...The drive for mental health parity was led by Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, who has a daughter with schizophrenia, and Senator Paul Wellstone, the Minnesota Democrat who was killed in a plane crash in 2002. Mr. Wellstone had a brother with severe mental illness.
Prominent members of both parties, including Betty Ford, Rosalynn Carter and Tipper Gore, pleaded with Congress to pass the legislation.
Representatives Patrick J. Kennedy, Democrat of Rhode Island, and Jim Ramstad, Republican of Minnesota, led the fight in the House. Mr. Kennedy has been treated for depression and, by his own account, became “the public face of alcoholism and addiction” after a car crash on Capitol Hill in 2006. Mr. Ramstad traces his zeal to the day in 1981 when he woke up in a jail cell in South Dakota after an alcoholic blackout.
The Senate passed a mental health parity bill in September 2007. The House passed a different version in March of this year....
Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/06/washington/06mental.html?_r=2&ref=health&oref= slogin&oref=slogin |
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