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June 8, 1999, Tuesday

SECTION: NEWS , Pg. 1A

LENGTH: 950 words

HEADLINE: CLINTON URGES MENTAL-HEALTH PARITY

BYLINE: Jonathan Riskind, Dispatch Washington Bureau

BODY:

White House forum

WASHINGTON -- Using the fo-

rum of the first-ever White House Conference on Mental Health, President Clinton pushed yesterday for comprehensive insurance coverage for the mentally ill.

Clinton unveiled steps aimed at boosting mental-health coverage, including an announcement that nearly 300 health plans covering federal employees must now provide comprehensive coverage for mental illness and drug and alcohol abuse.

The president urged Congress to mandate that the insurance industry and employers offer mental-health "parity,'' providing the same benefits for someone suffering from depression as for someone with a broken leg.

Many insurance companies say providing mental-health parity -- which a bipartisan 1996 law attempted to mandate but left open numerous loopholes -- will send health-care costs and insurance premiums skyrocketing. And many business leaders say parity will increase health-insurance premiums so much they will have to stop offering coverage. "But I believe that providing parity is something we can do at a reasonable cost, which will benefit millions of Americans, and over the long run have a healthier country and lower health-care costs,'' Clinton said. "In a nation founded on the ideals of equality, it is high time that our health plans treat all Americans equally.''

Clinton used Ohio to make his case, saying that a recent law providing mental-health parity to state employees as part of their health insurance coverage hasn't raised overall costs.

And he noted that earlier in the conference the medical director of Banc One Corp., Dr. Wayne Burton, told Vice President Al Gore that providing comprehensive mental-health benefits to employees actually lowered costs because preventive measures kept many employees from suffering worse -- and more expensive -- mental problems.

Steven V. Gulyassy, deputy director for the Ohio Office of Collective Bargaining, said state employees are covered by a policy through United Behavioral Health. Coverage is not restricted, he said.

"It's like a carve-out,'' Gulyassy said, "much as you might have a carve-out for pharmacy coverage.''

The cost, he said, is $ 6.92 per month for single coverage or $ 19.78 for family coverage, which totals $ 10.6 million a year for all state employees.

"It's about 4 percent of our health-care cost,'' Gulyassy said.

In the past 10 years, state legislators have considered several proposals to impose mental-health parity on all Ohio insurance providers. None has been enacted. The latest, House Bill 53, which would include addiction treatment, has received extensive hearings, but lawmakers appear in no hurry to act on it.

Meanwhile, Rep. Ted Strickland, D-Lucasville, joined Attorney General Janet Reno in a separate conference to discuss ways to better deal with the large numbers of criminals suffering from mental illness.

Strickland, a psychologist who worked at the state prison in Lucasville, Ohio, before winning his congressional seat, said he is working on legislation to establish federally assisted "mental-health courts'' where mentally disturbed offenders can be diverted into treatment programs similar to the successful drug court model.

"I am excited about the concept of having mental-health courts, where appropriately we can divert people into treatment rather than incarceration,'' he said.

Clinton appeared at the daylong conference at Howard University. Tipper Gore, the vice president's wife and chairwoman of the conference, has been a longtime mental- health advocate and recently disclosed that she suffered from clinical depression years ago after her son was involved in a serious car crash.

Mrs. Gore said that the conference sought to, at a minimum, dispel the stigma attached to mental illness so that the millions of Americans with diseases such as depression or schizophrenia won't hesitate to seek help and let family members and friends know about their problems. People must understand that mental illness is a disease that can be treated with medication and therapy much like cancer or heart disease, she said.

More than 19 million Americans suffer from depression. But only one in five mentally ill people seeks treatment, Mrs. Gore said.

She, her husband and first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton led a series of talk-show-like encounters with panels of people suffering from mental illness. The panels also included family members and medical experts.

"Mental illness is not just something that happens to other people,'' Mrs. Gore said. "We have to understand it happens to our American families.''

Mrs. Gore and President Clinton stressed that it is important to change attitudes about mental illness even as ways are sought to better treat the mentally ill.

The president announced the launching of a $ 7.3 million study to be conducted by the National Institute of Mental Health to seek the causes and best treatments of mental illnesses.

Clinton also unveiled a national program to train teachers and parents to identify and assist mentally ill children. Two of the backers of the program are the National Education Association and EchoStar, a satellite television company based in Littleton, Colo., which is providing 1,000 satellite dishes and 40 hours of air time to the program.

Littleton is where two teen-agers killed 12 classmates, a teacher and themselves in April.

Mrs. Clinton said that a key to preventing similar shootings is to intervene early in the lives of troubled youths.

Several cabinet members and nearly two dozen members of Congress participated in the conference.

Dispatch Statehouse Reporter James Bradshaw contributed to this story.

GRAPHIC: Photo, President Bill Clinton

LOAD-DATE: June 9, 1999

Document 298 of 422.


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