First-Ever House Parity Hearing Signals Momentum
Senate Bill to Be Introduced in House: Co-Sponsors Needed!

Parity Goal Advances: Mental health parity legislation advanced this week with a successful hearing on parity before a House subcommittee and an announcement by House champions, Rep. Marge Roukema (R-N.J.) and Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-N.J.) that next week they will introduce a companion bill
to the Senate's Domenici-Wellstone parity bill in the House.

Hearing Provides Launch Pad: The House of Representatives has long been a barrier to efforts to advance parity legislation. On March 13, however, one of its key committees, the Subcommittee on Employer-Employee Relations of the Education and Workforce Committee, held its first-ever hearing on parity. Longtime parity advocate and author of the pending parity bill in the House (H.R. 162), Rep. Roukema, was the first witness before the panel. Delivering a strong statement, she announced a strategy for advancing the goal:

"[W]hile there are 203 cosponsors of H.R. 162, I recognize the political reality is that the legislation in its current form is not likely to move forward in the House. However, I remain committed to move meaningful parity legislation through Congress as are 245 of our colleagues in the House who have come out in support of mental health parity. As such, I am pleased to announce that Representative Patrick Kennedy and I will soon introduce the Domenici-Wellstone parity bill (S. 543) in the House. This bill responds directly to the concerns of business and insurance groups. It will exempt small businesses with up to 50 employees. It will apply to in-network services only. It will - albeit with extreme reluctance on my part - not cover substance abuse. And it will include the same assurances that health plans will be able to manage the care they deliver."

The Subcommittee Chairman, Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas), characterized the panel's focus as seeking to balance the interests of mental health consumers and employers "to ensure that Congress does nothing to jeopardize an employer's willingness to offer mental health coverage altogether." Among the parity advocates on the subcommittee who were able to attend, Rep. Robert Andrews (D-N.J.), the Ranking Minority Member of the subcommittee; Rep. Lynn Rivers (D-Mich.); and Rep. Roukema challenged the view that any further concessions need be given to the business community. Rep. Rivers, citing her own "journey" with mental illness and minimal insurance coverage, which required her and her husband to dedicate some 50 percent of their household income to cover her mental health care, derided business arguments as "only about money." "The fact that we allow this discrimination to exist is a shame upon this nation," Rivers asserted.

New Roukema-Kennedy Bill: The bill being introduced by Reps. Roukema and Kennedy next week would mirror the provisions of S. 543, the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act, as adopted unanimously by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee last August. That bill prohibits
group health plans from imposing treatment limitations or financial requirements on the coverage of mental health conditions unless comparable limits are imposed on medical and surgical benefits. Contrary to the claims of opponents, S. 543 is a balanced bill, which more than meets any reasonable concerns in the business community. The bill exempts small businesses, makes it clear that health plans may employ the full range of managed-care mechanisms to contain cost, and does not require parity for services a plan member might seek outside of the plan's network of providers. Opponents have vigorously attacked provisions that permit no discrimination among diagnoses - characterizing the bill as "requiring treatment for the 'unhappy well,'" while ignoring that parity would apply only to services that are "medically necessary."

Needed Action: Urge Members of the House of Representatives to co-sponsor the Roukema-Kennedy mental health parity bill [expected to be introduced March 20] and to push for enactment of the bill this year.

Contact your representative by calling the parity hotline at 1-866-PARITY4. Follow that up by sending (or, preferably faxing) your representative a letter. The sample letter can be found here.

For additional information on parity, please contact Ralph Ibson at mailto:ribson@nmha or at
202-675-8388.