Parity for mental health coverage by insurance companies is a goal long out of the reach of most Americans. While both houses of Congress have passed their own versions of the original bill offering such parity, Congress has yet to offer a compromised version of the original legislation. 

 

On March 6, 2008, The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Act of 2007 (HR 1424), a bill designed to mandate equal insurance coverage for the treatment of mental health and addiction disorders as is currently offered for physical disorders. Current federal law allows discrimination by employers in terms of the breadth and length of coverage for mental health disorders and addiction, effectively limiting inpatient stays and outpatient visits in the interests of economic savings. The Senate has passed a similar bill that was more strongly supported by insurers and employers. Those groups maintain that the House version will drive up costs and hurt the economic bottom line, thus they have not thrown their support behind the House effort.

In a news conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated, “Illness of the brain must be treated just like illness in any other part of the body,” echoing the battle cry of the National Alliance on Mental Illness , an advocacy organization that maintains that mental illness is strictly a brain disorder, a conclusion that many psychiatric consumer groups 

While President Bush has communicated several times during his tenure that he supports the idea of mental health parity, the White House has opposed the House legislation due to the fact that “it would effectively mandate coverage of a broad range of diseases.”

Employers with fewer than 50 employees and private individual insurance plans would all be exempt from the law which essentially outlaws limits on mental health coverage nationwide for any employer with more than 50 employees.

In House debate, Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, (D-RI), the son of Senator Edward Kennedy, stated, “I have a mental illness, and I am fortunately getting the best care this country has to offer because I am a member of Congress.” The younger Kennedy has a history of successful treatment of depression and drug dependence. 

Similarly, the key Republican sponsor, Representative Jim Ramstad (R-MN), a recovered alcoholic, stated that he was “living proof that treatment works and recovery is real.”
According to the details of the bill, any insurer who chooses to offer mental health and addiction coverage must do so by providing full coverage for any disorder listed in the DSM-IV. While diagnoses determined to not be medically necessary could be denied, some insurers and employers argue that patients will seek unnecessary and costly treatment for conditions like jet lag and caffeine intoxication, diagnoses that do indeed exist in the DSM-IV.

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