Fw: Mental Health Parity Opponents Make Their Case in US Congress

>> Mental Health Parity Opponents Make Their Case in US Congress
>>
>> By Julie Rovner
>>
>> WASHINGTON (Reuters Health) Sept 17 - Even as key members of the US
>> Congress
>> continue negotiations with the Bush administration over how to guarantee
>> parity between insurance benefits for mental illness and those for other
>> ailments, opponents of the leading bill in Congress argued on Tuesday
>> that
>> its enactment would be a mistake.
>>
>> With health costs already rising at double-digit rates, "to add mandates
>> to
>> the current third-party payment system is just going to cause it to
>> collapse," said Rep. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., at a forum sponsored by the
>> National
>> Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA). "So anyone who's arguing for mandates
>> at
>> this point is really arguing for single-payer," he said, assuming the
>> governm
>> ent would take over the health insurance system if it truly fell apart.
>>
>> DeMint agreed that it is unfair that patients with mental illness are
>> frequently offered lower benefits than those with other ailments, but he
>> said
>> a better way to address the problem is to move to a "consumer-driven"
>> system,
>> in which patients are given money to spend on healthcare and decide
>> themselves how to allocate it. "That would be better coverage" for mental
>> health, he said.
>>
>> In agreement was NCPA President John Goodman, one of the earliest
>> proponents
>> of Medical Savings Accounts and other ways to make individuals more
>> responsible for their own healthcare. "Patients are the best monitors of
>> their care, they should control the money," he said.
>>
>> Paul Dennett of the American Benefits Council said that in addition to
>> the
>> cost problems, the bill sponsored by Sens. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., and
>> Paul
>> Wellstone, D-Minn., is too ambiguous.
>>
>> While it purports to bar plans that offer different visit limits or
>> copayments for mental health services than for other services, he said,
>> most
>> plans have visit limits for other types of care, such as physical or
>> occupational therapy. And virtually every plan has different levels of
>> cost-sharing, such as for doctor visits, emergency room care, and
>> prescription drugs, he said, making it unclear which levels mental health
>> benefits should match.
>>
>> Dr. Sally Satel, a psychiatrist representing the American Enterprise
>> Institute, questioned the bill's requirement for coverage of all mental
>> disorders, rather than just the most serious ones. "It makes some sense
>> to
>> hold some diagnoses to a different standard," she said, adding that the
>> potential cost "of people with mental health problems rather than mental
>> illness seeking unrestricted care is not trivial."
>>
>> But Dr. Henry Harbin, Chairman of Magellan Health Services, the nation's
>> largest managed mental health firm, said the vast majority of claims his
>> firm
>> handles--85%--are already for the more serious mental disorders.
>>
>> Dr. Harbin said that the cost of a parity requirement is hardly
>> prohibitive.
>> While several states have passed similar laws over the past several
>> years, he
>> said, "at Magellan we have yet to see a cost increase of greater than 1%
>> as a
>> result of a state parity law."
>>
>>