Mental Health Insurance Parity

What Is the American Brain Coalition?

The American Brain Coalition (ABC) is a non-profit organization that brings together people with disabling brain disorders, the families of those that are affected, and the professionals who research and treat diseases of the brain. The mission of the ABC is to reduce the burden of brain disorders and advance the understanding of the brain.

Mental Health Disorders Should be Treated like any other Medical Condition

The American Brain Coalition strongly supports full parity for mental health and substance abuse services in both private and public insurance coverage. Mental health treatments are more effective than ever, and equal coverage offers a just and affordable way to help all people to lead more productive and rewarding lives.

Millions of Americans live with mental health conditions, such as schizophrenia or depression, and addictive disorders, such as alcoholism. The ABC believes that these conditions should be treated like any medical condition with health plans providing common treatments and medications such as counseling and anti-depressants. Meanwhile, a 1999 U.S. Surgeon General's Report on mental health confirms that there is no justification for health plans to cover treatment for serious brain disorders differently from any other disease.

Costs Will Not Go Up

The Global Burden of Disease Study revealed that mental illness, including suicide, accounts for over 15 percent of the burden of disease in established market economies, such as the United States. This is more than the disease burden caused by all cancers.

Further, the National Institutes of Mental Health estimates that mental illnesses cost U.S. employers $70 billion a year in lost productivity, absenteeism, and disability.

Forty-one states have already passed parity legislation. As for cost, PricewaterhouseCoopers, LLP reports that, "there are no examples where mental health parity has been enacted in a state and costs have dramatically increased." With medicine and economics on the side of parity, it is now policy's turn to catch up with what should be reality.

Background

In 1996 Congress passed the Domenici-Wellstone Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA) and eliminated lifetime and annual financial caps for mental health coverage. These caps had often been used to deny people insurance coverage for necessary treatment. The result was that these same people often had to rely on the public mental health system to cover what their own health plans would not. The MHPA set cap-eliminating standards that apply nationally, including to ERISA self-insured plans.

Although the MHPA was a first step, many important reforms are still needed.  Health insurance plans routinely impose restrictive limits on mental health care, requiring patients to pay greater out-of-pocket costs, restricting hospital stays, and limiting outpatient visits without regard for a patient's condition.

Recommendation

The ABC supports the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007 (S. 588), which would require employers and health plans to end insurance coverage limitations for mental health conditions that do not apply to other medical conditions. The ABC also supports legislation mandating healthcare coverage for all US residents, which would enable people with mental health conditions to have equal access to healthcare. /p>

Approved by the American Brain Coalition July 2006.