Mental health specialists push for insurance

DEE ANNE FINKEN of The Oregonian reports:
A national effort requiring insurers to cover treatment for mental illness and substance abuse -- on a level equal to that for physical illnesses -- comes Saturday to the Pacific Northwest, an environment that has supported similar legislation with state laws.

A forum Saturday at Washington State University Vancouver -- involving consumers, psychologists, researchers, and hospital and law-enforcement representatives -- will address the need for a federal law despite inroads made at the state level.

"Until we have a federal parity law, state parity legislation is always at risk," said Gregory Robinson, executive director of Columbia River Mental Health Services in Vancouver.

Robinson noted that Oregon and Washington are among 41 states with varying mental-health parity requirements, but he said nearly two summers ago a congressional bill dealing with health plans for small businesses would have erased parity legislation in all states.

"Although most of the language of that bill wasn't about mental-health parity, it included this poisonous pill," Robinson said.

A national effort is being led by U.S. Rep. Patrick Kennedy, D-R.I., who has been a major force behind the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007. U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, a psychologist who worked in the field for 23 years before his election in 1998, invited Kennedy to Vancouver to host the forum and discuss the act.

"Mental-health equity, or parity, as it is called, has predominately been left up to the states," said Baird, a Democrat from Vancouver. "But a hodgepodge of laws means many, many plans exempt people from coverage."

The U.S. Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee on Wednesday provided momentum to the campaign when it approved legislation addressing parity. Kennedy plans to introduce legislation in the House in March.

Beyond treatment for depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other mental illnesses, the federal act would require insurers to cover treatment for substance abuse, a provision that makes Oregon's bill one of the strongest in the nation. Signed by Gov. Ted Kulongoski in August 2005, the bill went into effect this year.

Randy Revelle, of the Washington Coalition for Insurance Parity, said state lawmakers and Gov. Chris Gregoire could vote in March on a bill that, though it would not include coverage for substance-abuse treatment, would extend parity for mental-health treatment to nearly a half million Washingtonians left out of a bill passed in 2005.

Still, Revelle said, another 4 million Washingtonians -- those covered by Medicare, Medicaid, the military or self-insurance plans -- won't have parity until a federal is passed.

Opponents have raised concerns about the economic impact of coverage parity. But Robinson said Americans have accepted that many Americans -- one in five -- suffer from depression at some point and that treatment works.