Bill Proposes Insurance Coverage For Eating Disorders Senate Health Committee Hears Emotional Testimony

Often discounted as a symptom of teenage angst, the topic of eating disorders was given serious attention by state lawmakers on Monday.

As the result of a bill proposed by Sen. Lisa Brown, D-Spokane, the Senate committee on Health and Long-Term Care heard emotional testimony relating to mandated insurance coverage for treatment of eating disorders.

Brown’s bill would provide coverage for treatment of eating disorders on a par with other serious medical conditions. Most importantly, say supporters, the bill would put physicians in charge of determining the type and length of treatment.

But representatives of small businesses said mandated coverage policies create higher prices for insurance coverage overall.

“We’re in favor of getting rid of all mandated benefits,” said Carolyn Logue of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. By spending less money on mandated coverage, she said, small businesses could offer more employees basic coverage. Linda Zobrist, an outreach coordinator from Swedish Medical Center’s eating disorders program in Seattle, said there are too many people who have trouble paying for treatment and, consequently, try battling the illness alone.

Zobrist’s facility is the only in-patient eating disorder program in the Northwest. At $500 per day, her 10-bed facility is not filled with the rich and famous, she said.

“We see people who have mortgaged their homes and have gone bankrupt to get into our program.”

Such drastic solutions aren’t foreign concepts to Beverly Walker. When her daughter was hospitalized with heart failure after a bout with anorexia, the hospital recommended she be admitted to an eating disorder treatment facility. This left the Walkers scrambling for answers.

“We didn’t have the money to send her to an eating disorder treatment center,” she said, noting that the nearest facility was 180 miles away in Seattle.

Though eating disorders are often dismissed as dieting obsessions among white, upper- or middle-class girls, Vivienne Dutzar, a registered dietician at Spokane’s Sacred Heart Medical Center, said the label misrepresents the disease as a “social illness.”

“This disease crosses all sexes and socio-economic lines,” said Dutzar, who has seen patients as young as six and as old as 60, from varying backgrounds. She added that though most of her patients do not require expensive in-patient treatment, many still feel the pinch of insurance restrictions.

Coupled with “denial and lack of awareness” about eating disorders, Brown said that limited coverage or exclusion of coverage leads to life-threatening conditions.

“In this case, it is clear that the benefits outweigh the costs,” she said.