Mental Health Bill Misses The Point

Insurers and benefit managers, in anattempt to keep a lid on soaring mental healthcare costs, oftenplace far more stringent limits on such coverage than those theyroutinely apply to treatment of non-psychological woes.

Congress tried to redress this injustice by passing the MentalHealth Parity Act in 1996. But the law–which limits therestrictions that can be imposed by employers (that is, by thoseemployers who still offer mental health benefits at all)–sunsets onSept. 30.

In voting to extend the law earlier this month, a Senatecommittee expanded the law's scope beyond biologically-baseddisorders to virtually all mental health problems. The new lawwould also prohibit employers from applying specific limits oncost-sharing, number of visits, or days of coverage.

Employer and health insurer groups immediately howled that thenew mandates would hike premiums and force firms to limit otherbenefits or drop mental health coverage altogether to keep groupplans affordable.

As with the debate over a patients' bill of rights, wesympathize with those who want to prevent people needing medicalcare from falling between the widening cracks in the healthinsurance system. The problem is particularly acute when it comesto mental health, which too many people misunderstand or fail totake seriously.

On the other hand, as with patients' rights bills, anyinitiative to broaden coverage is going to put more pressure onalready soaring health insurance costs, which will either forcecutbacks in benefits or pass-alongs to employees. With the economygrinding to a halt, this is a particularly bad time to be raisinghealth insurance costs.

In addition, new mandates will only help the dwindling number ofpeople lucky enough to have health insurance.

The overriding goal in the short term should be to get basichealth insurance to as many people as possible. Any political moveto increase costs will defeat this primary purpose and leavemillions worse off than they were before any “protections” werevoted into place.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property &Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, August 27, 2001.Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.

Contact Webmaster