Physicians lobbying Congress for health law expansions

At stake are laws providing equal insurance coverage for treatment of mental illness and patent extensions for drugs tested on children.

By Geri Aston, AMNews staff. Dec. 17, 2001.

Washington -- Several physician groups are pushing lawmakers to pass legislation that would reauthorize and expand two health care laws that expire this year.

One bill would ensure that insurance coverage for mental illnesses is equal to that for other illnesses. The other gives pharmaceutical companies financial incentives to conduct studies to determine the safety and proper dosage of drugs for children.

The mental health parity measure would expand the original 1996 law, which expired at the end of September. It is attached as an amendment to the Senate fiscal year 2002 spending bill for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, which passed in October. The House-passed version of the appropriations bill includes no such provisions, and at press time lawmakers were negotiating whether mental health parity would be included in the final package.

The mental health parity provisions "would open up to millions of people the opportunity for more appropriate coverage of psychiatric illness without discriminatory co-pays and deductibles," said Paul Appelbaum, MD, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Assn. and professor and chair of psychiatry at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester.

The original law banned annual or lifetime spending caps on mental health benefits that are lower than those for medical or surgical benefits. The statute's impact was limited by its narrow scope, according to mental health advocates. Insurers shifted from dollar caps on benefits to restrictions on the number of hospital stays or doctor visits for mental health services and to higher co-payments and deductibles for such care, Dr. Appelbaum said. [...]