End Funding Bias Against Mentally Ill

As April came to its chilly close and the phony posturings of a presidential campaign year spread like flu through the Capitol, the U.S. Senate did something remarkable. Setting partisanship aside, member after member rose to speak in moving terms about mental illness and loved ones who have suffered from it. Then they voted, surprising even themselves, to impose a federal mandate that at long last could open doors to equitable treatment of the mentally ill.

Federal mandates have fallen out of favor, but even conservative Republicans were supporting this one.

The proposal itself is simple, though its fate is unclear because it now awaits negotiations with the House.

Known as the Domenici-Wellstone Mental Health Parity Amendment, the proposal is tacked to a widely supported health insurance bill. The parity amendment simply provides that health insurance policies cannot limit coverage of mental health services more than they limit coverage for every other illness.

Five states and a number of large corporations already have ended insurance discrimination toward people with mental illness. They have found, senators said in floor debate, that doing so is a good investment and does not cause the big cost increases critics predict.

How can that be?

One reason is, today’s managed care policies drive treatment decisions toward the most cost-efficient methods.

Another reason is, limits on mental illness coverage inhibit patients from getting care - modern care, that combines new drugs with briefer therapy and boasts success rates in the 60 percent to 80 percent range. People whose mental illness goes untreated place expensive strains on society, business and the health insurance system. Depression alone costs business $23.8 billion a year in absenteeism and lost productivity. Mental illness is the single most common reason people see a family doctor. Unaddressed, it contributes to overuse of medical facilities, educational failure, substance abuse, divorce, unemployment, crime, homelessness and suicide.

Insurance restraints on treatment of mental illness go hand in hand with ignorance. Many Americans still mistake the symptoms of mental illness for laziness or sin, and harbor dated notions about the length, cost, means and effectiveness of psychiatric care. In fact there is hope when people are allowed to seek it.

It would be good for business, families, public safety and a loved one you probably know if a federal mandate brought this chronic national injustice to an end. It’s time we empower modern medicine to treat mental disease just as it treats every other injury and malfunction of the human body.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Webster/For the editorial board