Senate backs expansion of mental health parity law

As part of an appropriations bill, the proposal must still gain final passage and clear House-Senate conference committee negotiations.

By Amy Snow Landa, AMNews staff. Nov. 19, 2001.

Washington -- In a victory for the mental health community, the Senate has approved legislation that would require health insurers to offer the same level of benefits for mental illness that they do for physical illness.

The Senate passed the mental health parity measure Oct. 30 as an amendment to its fiscal year 2002 spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education.

The amendment is based on legislation by Sens. Pete Domenici (R, N.M.) and Paul Wellstone (D, Minn.).

It would reauthorize and expand the 1996 mental health parity law, which expired on Sept. 30.

Specifically, Domenici and Wellstone are seeking to advance protections beyond those in current law that prohibit insurers from imposing annual and lifetime dollar limits on mental health benefits that are lower than those for medical or surgical benefits.

The 1996 statute contains loopholes that allow insurers to limit mental health coverage in other ways, such as restricting the number of outpatient visits per year -- loopholes that need to be closed, Wellstone said.

"For far too long, mental health consumers in the health care system have been discriminated against in the health care system -- subjected to discriminatory cost-sharing, limited access to specialties and other barriers to needed services."

The Domenici-Wellstone legislation would ban insurers from setting any limits on mental health benefits that are greater than those for medical and surgical benefits. But the measure would require parity only of those insurers that provide mental health coverage. [...]