Fed bailout bill did more than rescue banks…
There was plenty of outrage when the federal government passed a bill recently spending billions of our dollars to bail out greedy banks. But in all the uproar, no one seemed to notice a provision in the bill that was long overdue – and could change the lives of millions of Americans.
The bill – through that magic art of Congress whereby unrelated bills piggyback on larger bills – carried a provision requiring insurance plans to provide better coverage for mental health.
The law does not mandate that insurance plans cover mental health treatment. It just says that insurance plans that do cover mental health treatment – such as psychiatric or addiction sessions – must provide a level of coverage equal to their coverage of physical ailments. As many as 113 million Americans may benefit from this bill.
All I can say is, this is long overdue. Insurance companies were content to let families go broke getting mental health care. I've read stories about parents who let their troubled teens go to jail, where they could get the mental health care the parents couldn't afford. It's an agonizing dilemma.
You see, insurance companies hate mental health treatment. With physical health, they know your doctor can see you for five minutes and write you a prescription – and the process is over cheaply. The last thing these profit- driven companies want to pay for is therapy sessions you may end up needing for years – even if this mental health treatment is critical to your well-being.
Our old system rewarded this bad behavior by the insurance companies. The new system won't. Every now and then, I guess Washington gets something right. It's just a shame, when you think about the importance of this legislation, that Congress couldn't pass it on its own. It had to hide behind the shadow of a $700 billion bailout.
