The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a May 18 hearing to discuss a bill (S. 796) that would require health insurance companies to cover mental health in the same manner they cover physical health. Expressing the importance of mental health coverage, Committee Chair James Jeffords (R-VT) opened the hearing saying, “Research shows that early recognition of mental illness oftentimes reduces the onset of more serious mental illness and more expensive interventions down the road.”
Under the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act of 1999, sponsored by Sens. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN), health plans would be prohibited from imposing limits on the number of covered inpatient hospital days and outpatient visits for severe biologically-based mental illnesses, unless comparable limits are imposed for medical and surgical services. Severe biologically-based mental illnesses include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, obsessive compulsive and severe panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, autism, and other severe and disabling mental disorders such as anorexia nervosa and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
The bill would expand the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-204) to include parity for the number of covered hospital days and outpatient visits for mental illnesses. The 1996 law requires health plans to make the annual and lifetime limits on mental health and physical health services equal. Additionally, S. 796 would only apply to those health plans that already provide mental health coverage.
“This bill will be a major step toward ending the persistent discrimination against people who suffer from mental illness,” stated Sen. Wellstone. “The current estimate is that about 20 percent of the U.S. adult population are affected by mental disorders during a given year, and although the research on children is not well-documented, the percentage of children affected by mental or emotional disorders appears to be very similar, at 20 percent, with 9 percent severely affected,” he added.
Additionally, approximately twice as many women suffer from major depression as men. Currently, roughly seven million women have been diagnosed with depression and it occurs most frequently in women ages 25-44. According to the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, one out of every five women will suffer from major depression in their lifetime, compared to one in 15 men.
Speaking to the costs associated with implementing a mental health parity law, Sen. Domenici said that the General Accounting Office “found the costs associated with the federal parity law have been negligible for most health plans. In fact, only 3% of employers reported an increase in costs.”
