U.S. Representative Rick Larsen joined a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives today to pass landmark legislation that will end unequal insurance coverage for mental illness and help ensure that patients seeking treatment for mental illness get the care they need. The House passed the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act by a vote of 268 to 148.  The Senate has passed similar legislation, and the two bills must be reconciled before final legislation can be sent to the President’s desk.

“Ending insurance discrimination against people who need treatment for mental illness and addiction is the right thing to do,” said Larsen. “It is also a smart investment.  This bill will save money, not just for families who break the bank paying for needed care their health plans won’t cover, but for businesses losing millions of dollars in lost productivity.”

Workers suffering from depression lose 5.6 hours per week of productive work time, costing employers an estimated $31 billion per year, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. According to another study, alcohol-related illness cost U.S. businesses over $129.5 billion in lost worker productivity in just one year.

The bipartisan bill passed today prohibits insurers and group health plans from imposing treatment or financial limitations on mental health benefits that are more restrictive than those applied to other medical care. Importantly, it does not preempt stronger state mental health parity laws in Washington state and other parts of the country. 

“Mental health parity brings the mind and the body back together and ceases to treat mental health illness as an orphan condition,” said Gary Williams, Human Services Division Supervisor for the Whatcom County Health Department. “Families have been devastated by the cost of obtaining mental health and psychiatric care even though they had insurance. This bill is absolutely essential to providing families and individuals with comprehensive care.”

“NAMI Snohomish County strongly supports the current congressional effort to enact mental health parity legislation,” said Jim Bloss, President of the Snohomish County Chapter of NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness). “This legislation will make a tremendous positive impact on mental health services availability and delivery for the many sufferers of these disorders in not only Snohomish County but certainly the entire North Sound region in Washington state.”
 
Over the past eight years, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program has made parity coverage for mental health care available to Members of Congress and 8.5 million other federal employees.  Research has shown that there has been no significant cost increase attributable to this new coverage.