Lawmakers look for support for mental health parity

Congresswoman shares her experience with mental illness during the first House hearing on the issue.

By Amy Snow Landa, AMNews staff. April 15, 2002.

Washington -- As a college student and mother in the late 1970s, Lynn Rivers went from manic highs to times so bleak she couldn't get out of bed.

Diagnosed with bipolar disorder, she began twice-weekly visits to a psychiatrist. It took more than a decade to find the right mix of medications to stabilize her mood swings.

During that time, she and her husband had health insurance, but it covered only six psychiatric visits a year. The rest, which they had to pay for out of pocket, ate up half their take-home income for several years.

"When the tension caused by a major disease is exacerbated by financial problems caused by the treatment, it is a very difficult burden to bear."

Rivers, now a fourth-term congresswoman, is working to ensure other families don't face a similar struggle to pay for mental health care.

The Michigan Democrat is backing House legislation that would prohibit federally regulated health plans from providing a lower level of benefits for mental health treatment than they do for medical and surgical treatment.

"The fact that we allow this discrimination to persist is a shame upon our nation," she told her colleagues during a March 13 hearing of the House Education and Workforce Committee's subcommittee on employer-employee relations.

Current law requires federally regulated health plans to set the same annual and lifetime caps on coverage for mental health as they do for other conditions, but it permits tighter limits on hospital stays and outpatient visits and higher co-pays. Those loopholes would be closed under identical House and Senate legislation. [...]