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Recovery in the News
Andrews looks to build up health bill support
Bill Cahir
NJ.com
July 13, 2007
WASHINGTON House lawmakers for more than a decade have sponsored legislation that would require private health plans to cover treatments for mental illnesses and substance addictions, but their latest bill, despite sweeping bipartisan support, once again has run into buzz-saw opposition from business lawyers and employer groups.
"It's my view that we do need a strong and well thought-out federal standard to guarantee mental health parity," U.S. Rep. Robert Andrews, D-1st Dist., said when he conducted a press conference and a hearing this week with former First Lady Rosalyn Carter and U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy to drum up support for the House legislation.
The House bill would encourage health plans to set equal co-payments, deductibles and treatment limits for regular health care services and for mental health and substance abuse services, which may be limited or even blocked from coverage under a typical health plans now.
The legislation has 268 co-sponsors, and Kennedy, D-R.I., says he has House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's commitment to bring the measure to the House floor for a vote.
The bill would not compel private-sector employers to provide mental health and substance abuse coverage to their workers.
But it would require firms that choose to provide such coverage to their employees to match the relatively generous list of mental health and substance abuse benefits now offered to members of Congress and their aides under the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.
The measure came under fire at the House hearing by lawyers for the National Retail Federation and the American Benefits Council, a lobby for large employers with stores and employees in most or all of the states.
They noted that while the House proposal would override some state laws, it would allow some states to maintain more stringent requirements than those set out in the federal law.
Jon Breyfogle, a lawyer representing the benefits council, in his testimony protested that the House bill would surpass even the generosity of congressional health plan by requiring insurers to cover mental health and substance abuse services provided by medical personnel who don't belong to one employer's network.
"Very few state laws measure up to this kind of parity rule," Breyfogle said. He noted that a Senate bill did not require health plans to include treatment for substance abuse addictions within the definition of mental health services.
Stephen P. Melek, an actuary with the consulting firm of Milliman, Inc., found that the House bill would not be very costly. The measure would increase per capita health costs by 0.6 percent, or $2.40 per person each month, Melek said.
But Aliya Wong, a pension and health benefits expert with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in an interview said her group also objected to the House legislation.
She said employers believed it would be "very dangerous" for Congress to define a set of health benefits that employers had to provide to workers even while letting states set even more demanding rules.
Mrs. Carter said that she had called President Bush in 2001 in an attempt to dislodge a mental-health parity bill from a House committee. The measure never came to a vote despite her efforts.
She testified before the House Subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, which is headed by Andrews, that health plans that fail to cover mental health services drive up costs for employers and taxpayers.
"Then we pay the price for this folly in homelessness, lives lost, families torn apart, loss of productivity, and the costs of treatment in our prisons and jails," Mrs. Carter testified.