Mental Health Parity

[Guest guest]

It is necessary for Congress to pass Mental Health Parity

legislation. We have been working toward this for years. It looks

good this year, but we need your help. This will provide for equal

funding for behavioral health coverage and health coverage in general

in all insurance plans. Autism is most often listed under mental

health or behavioral health portions of health care plans. It is time

to call and email your representatives to get them on board. See the

action alert below.

We have another chance to lobby our federal legislators (House

members, in this case) on the issue of parity for insurance coverage

of mental health treatment. Here is the basic information, along

with a request for you each to make a phone call to your Rep. Please

take the couple of minutes it will require to read this brief post

and the couple of minutes needed to make the phone call.

Here is the information. Now, go make that phone call!

Representatives Marge Roukema and Kennedy introduced the

Domenici-Wellstone " Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act " in the

House on

March 20. The bill is designated H.R. 4066. In a display of

bipartisan,

multi-jurisdictional support, they were joined by cosponsors who sit

on the

three committees with a hand in the issue: Commerce, Education, and

Ways & Means Cosponsors are: Ehrlich (R-MD), Sherrod Brown (D-

OH) (If you are in Sherrod Brown's district, be sure to thank him for

his co-sponsorship.), Charlie Norwood (R-GA), (D-CA),

Jim Ramstad (R-MN) and Pete Stark (D-CA). We hope all of the 224

Members who cosigned the December 1 pro-parity letter to

Appropriations

conferees will join them. It's especially important to get Republican

cosponsors.

ACTION: Contact all Members of the House of Representatives.

MESSAGE: " I'm calling as a constituent to ask Representative

_________ to cosponsor H.R. 4066, the new Roukema mental health parity

bill. " [Pronounced " ROCK-uh-muh " ]

Background: The bill is based on the text of S. 543 as approved 21-0

by the

Senate Health Committee in August 2001 and passed by the full Senate

as an

Appropriations amendment. It requires group health plans that have

mental

health benefits to use the same visit limits and financial

requirements as

those used for other medical conditions, subject to medical necessity

as

determined by the health plan. Like the Federal Employee Health

Benefit

Program that insures Members of Congress, MHETA requires parity only

for

in-network services. This is a consensus bill with numerous

concessions

having been made to Senators concerned about the impact on

employers. These

included exempting small businesses under 50 and further clarifying

that

employers may use appropriate management techniques.

You can access the bill at: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?

d107:hr04066:. S. 543 calls for a GAO study after the bill's

implementation. That study in H.R. 4066 is to include estimating the

cost of expanding the law to include substance abuse and chemical

dependency, at the request of Rep. Ramstad, a longtime proponent of

substance abuse parity.