After more than ten years of attempts, on Wed., March 5, the U.S. House of Representatives finally passed legislation that would require equivalent health care coverage (or non-coverage) for mental and physical illnesses including chemical addiction: The Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.
Since the Senate has also passed a similar version of the legislation, elimination in the disparity between mental and physical health care funding could soon be an actuality. Equal treatment of the mentally ill and chemically addicted, as required by the Wellstone Act, could soon be a reality.
The Wellstone Act is named after the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone, D-Minn, who had a mentally ill family member and fought for years to require insurers to provide benefits to assist persons affected by mental illnesses.
The act is being hailed by supporters as a civil rights bill for people with mental illnesses and chemical addiction, requiring insurance companies to treat people suffering from these problems as they treat others. However, not everyone is in favor of treating the mentally ill the same as the physically ill. Opponents claim the Wellstone Act’s requirements could drive up health care costs and force some employers to drop insurance coverage. Or worse yet, technically under the act, so long as a health care provider gives equal funding to both, they are in compliance — and that could mean no coverage for either mental or physical illnesses.
While these are always possibilities, with any new mandate placed upon our already costly health care system, those outcomes are unlikely in this case. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the bill would only increase group health insurance premiums by an average of four-tenths of one percent. The low cost and savings from preventative, consistent treatment versus long-term, emergency treatment may be enough of an incentive for health insurance companies and others to sign on to the proposal.
Aside from the afflictions military personnel experience when they return from combat, the National Alliance on Mental Illness estimates that mental illness affects at least one in five American families.
My family is one of those.
My Uncle Richard was a wonderful, kind and caring man that most everyone enjoyed spending time with. Uncle Richard suffered from schizophrenia and chemical addiction and was also a diabetic. Disabled and unable to work because of complications from these conditions, I saw my uncle get the help he needed from the government to treat his diabetes but not his mental illness or chemical addiction. Unfortunately, my family was too poor to afford private treatment and eventually, the latter overcame him and he passed away at just over 40 years old. It was a sad and unnecessary end to a good man’s life.
It’s outrageous and imprudent to provide health care for people with physical illnesses but not those with mental illnesses — especially when a person is afflicted with both as my Uncle Richard was. What sense is there in treating someone’s diabetes, for example, but not their schizophrenia or chemical addiction? Even if you could cure the diabetes, the chemical addiction or schizophrenia ends up killing the person, so what use was there in funding the diabetes treatment in the first place?
NAMI and other supporters of the Wellstone Act agree with this logic. Further, proponents of the Wellstone Act say even though the Congressional Budget Office estimates very low cost increases for implementing this legislation, it might actually end up saving the U.S. government and taxpayers money in the long run.
If health insurance companies and health care providers provide equal funding for physical and mental illness as well as chemical addiction, it is estimated that costs from unnecessary disability, unemployment, substance abuse, homelessness, inappropriate incarceration and suicides will decrease by more than $100 billion each year in the United States. Just examining one of these aspects — the proportion of prisoners in U.S. jails for drug-related offenses-makes this estimate look very realistic.
I laud Congress for taking this important policy step toward treating all ill people equally. Tens of millions of Americans may soon have the resources they need to finally start fully living and enjoying their lives. While this legislation will not immediately change the stigma our society has against the chemically addicted and those suffering from mental illnesses, it is an important first step in this direction. Now it’s up to the insurance companies, health care providers and employers to make sure that both, rather than neither, get funded.
