For Immediate Release April 14, 1999

Contact: Jim Farrell or Andy McDonald (202) 224-8440

 Senator Paul Wellstone and Senator Pete Domenici introduced ground breaking legislation today to help end discrimination in the private health care insurance industry against Americans with mental illnesses. The Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act of 1999 will ensure that private health insurance companies provide the same level of coverage for mental illnesses as they do for other diseases. The bill is a major step forward in ensuring mental health care coverage for millions of Americans.

"For far too long, mental illness has been stigmatized or viewed as a character flaw, rather than as the serious disease that it is. Too often we try to push the problem away, deny health insurance coverage, or blame those with the illness for having the illness. Yet scientific reasearch clearly has shown the devastating physical and emotional toll this disease can take on our lives. We all have known someone with a serious mental illness, within our families or circle of friends," Wellstone said.

The Wellstone-Domenici bill ensures greater parity in the coverage of mental health benefits by prohibiting limits on the number of covered hospital days and outpatient visits for all mental illnesses. It also provides full parity, i.e., parity for co-payments, deductibles, hospital day and outpatient visit benefits, for many of the most severe adult and child mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, major depression, post traumatic stress disorder, autism and other disabling mental disorders.

The bill is needed because private health insurers in many cases took advantage of loopholes in the present system by denying treatment, restricting benefits, and imposing higher co-payments than for general medical health care to those suffering mental illness. A recent major survey of employer-provided benefits showed a steep decline in benefits in the last decade.

"This bill goes a long way toward our bipartisan goal: that mental illness be treated like any other disease in health care coverage. It is a big step forward in ending the suffering of those with mental illness who have been unfairly discriminated against in their health care coverage. We must make treatment for this illness as available and as routine as treatment for any other disease," said Wellstone.

The bill also provides protection for non-physician providers, and for states with stronger parity bills; it also includes a small business exemption, and eliminates the sunset provision and the 1% exemption from the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act (MHPA).

The Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act of 1999 expands the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, which was breakthrough legislation providing parity for lifetime and annual limits for mental health benefits. The present Wellstone-Domenici bill furthers that legislation by providing for major improvements in coverage for mental illness by private health insurers. It does not require that mental health benefits be part of a health benefits package, but establishes a requirement for parity in coverage for those plans that already offer mental health benefits.