Community Listening Forum Toolkit: Make Your Voice Heard!
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Recovery Advocacy Toolkit: Making Our Voices Count
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eNewsletter - February 25, 2009
Resources
The Foundation for Recovery hosted a Town Hall meeting in November to discuss the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008. You can watch the event moderated by Tiffani Sargent of ABC’s Action News morning show. The panelists were:
- Tom Coderre: National Field Director, Faces & Voices of Recovery
- Dr. Melvin Pohl: Medical Director, Las Vegas Recovery Center
- Dr. Stuart Ghertner: Agency Director, S. NV Adult Mental Health Services Agency
- Stacy Hakes: Manager of Clinical EAP, Behavioral Healthcare Options (a subsidiary of United Healthcare)
- Leslie Dickson: President, NV Psychiatric Association
The Town Hall meeting was well attended by members of the recovery community, the healthcare and mental health communities, insurers, private practice clinicians, legislators and the local media. Following a short presentation by Tom Coderre about Faces & Voices of Recovery and the new law, Ms. Sargent opened the discussion up by taking questions, from both the live audience and from a selection of questions that had been submitted prior to the event. The question and answer portion of the event lasted approximately 90 minutes and covered an array of topics which included, but were not limited to:
- Insurance coverage and benefits (before and after)
- Plan implementation and effective dates
- Who the new law helps and how
- Healthcare provider “short falls” when dealing with addiction
- Changes to the “care landscape” as a result of the new law
Attendees and experts alike came away from the meeting with a better understanding and appreciation of this new legislation. There are many more questions to be answered and the discussion will continue but this was an important first step toward bridging the discrepancy between mental health/addiction benefits and medical/surgical benefits and how impactful that will be on the lives of the millions who it will serve.