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August 28, 2008
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Recovery Advocacy Toolkit: Making Our Voices Count
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eNewsletter - August 14, 2007
Congress recesses – Act to end insurance discrimination!
We are at a critical point in the fight to end insurance discrimination against people still struggling with addiction and mental illness. We need your help to urge Congress to act quickly on the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act (HR 1424) when members of Congress return to Washington, DC on September 3rd.
If your member of Congress serves on the House Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce committee, your advocacy is particularly important.
BACKGROUND:
H.R. 1424 successfully passed out of one of three House committees that must act on the bill. Now, it awaits approval by the Energy and Commerce and Ways and Means Committees before it can move to the House floor for final passage. When they come back, there may only be a few weeks for action, so it’s going to take concerted advocacy to get House approval this year.
To increase pressure for House action, please set up an appointment and meet with your Representative when he or she is home in your District. If you can’t make an appointment, find out where your Representative will be – are there Town Hall meetings scheduled for example – and ask about the bill in a public forum.
- Here’s information on how to carry out a meeting.
- Here’s information on how to find and contact your Representative in his or her home office. Ask to speak with the Scheduler to schedule an appointment.
- Here’s what to ask if your Representative serves on the House Ways and Means or Energy and Commerce committees: “Please work to have your committee mark-up and approve H.R. 1424, the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007 early in September, so that the legislation has a chance of being enacted this year.”
- Here’s what to ask if your Representative doesn’t belong to the committees: “Please work with your colleagues to pass the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007, H.R. 1424, in September. Insurance discrimination against Americans in need of mental health and addictive disorder treatment should no longer be tolerated.”
In the Senate, there was some last-minute action on a much-improved version of S. 558, the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, right before Congress adjourned earlier this month. According to Congressional Quarterly, a compromise was reached on a new bill that was going to be offered by Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), chair of the Senate Health, Education and Labor committee. He and other committee members wanted the bill to be considered quickly under what is called unanimous consent, when there is no Senate debate on the bill. They had reached agreement on new language that would have deleted the preemption language in the original bill, allowing stronger state laws to prevail.
Senator James DeMint (R-SC) didn’t agree to the plan that would have quickly moved the bill forward. Instead he halted the bill’s progress. The full Senate is expected to consider S. 558 when it returns to legislative business in September.