This was the week that Congress passed and the President signed a new law requiring that most health insurers (if they cover mental health treatment at all) pay for lots and lots of talk therapy and addiction rehab the same way they pay for lots of angioplasties or appendectomies, in the name of “parity” and “nondiscrimination”. Very optimistically — it won’t be Congress writing the checks — the ten-year cost is projected at only $3.4 billion. (Judith Graham, “Triage”/Chicago Tribune, Oct. 3). Next week lawmakers will go back to complaining that health insurance has become prohibitively expensive and that much of the population is priced out of buying it altogether. Mickey Kaus remembers where we’ve seen this sort of feel-good short-circuiting of underwriting standards before (Oct. 2).
8 Comments
And, what in the world exactly does this earmark have to do with the credit crisis, I wonder?
Jason,
I think it is more a accident of chance that the bill the Senate had to use to introduce a money item, the House id the one charged with that task, happened to include it.
Congress is only being fair. After all they already passed a full employment act for lawyers in the guise of the ADA. The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity & Addiction Equity Act of 2008 will be a full employment act for psychiatrists and psychologists.
The end result will be the dropping of mental health coverage altogether by many plans.
Will the treatment come with a warranty in the event it later proves defective?
Okay, I’ve had it with playing by the rules. Now I’m going to start gaming the system.
This statement of intent is clear evidence that I’m mentally unstable.
Please send my check.
Certainly, John Burgess’ comment was made with tongue-in-cheek, but he is right on the money. PTSD to a large degree follows Mr. Burgess’ comment.
There is such a thing as serious mental illness – Mr. Chau, the school shooter comes to mind. The question then is how many gaming-the-system cases are there for each valid case? US policy to date is that that ratio is too high. I know of no data to change that policy. In fact, the PTSD people recently plowed the public relations to put that problem on par with amputation. The propaganda actually creates PTSD cases through suggestion. We saw this effect in spades with the non-existent Gulf War Syndrom cases.
The insurance industry provides coverage for so many less than necessary or life saving treatments and medications. If providing mental health care saves a few people from shooting classmates or raping children, I think it is money well spent. Better than Viagra treatment or “in vitro” fertilization treatment!