Scientific Evidence Of Biological-Neurological Connection Could Help Efforts To Pass Mental Health Parity Legislation, Columnist Writes

Main Category: Health Insurance / Medical Insurance
Also Included In: Mental Health;  Biology / Biochemistry;  Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 01 Apr 2008 - 10:00 PDT

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A "critical moment has been reached in a 15-year debate in statehouses and in Congress over whether treatment for problems like depression, addiction and schizophrenia should get the same coverage by insurance companies as, say, diabetes, heart disease and cancer," New York Times columnist Sarah Kershaw writes. According to Kershaw, although "[d]ecades of culture change and recent scientific studies have blurred the line between" mental and physical disorders, mental health parity "raises all sorts of tricky questions," such as, "Is an ailment a legitimate disease if you can't test for it?"

Kershaw writes that "as federal parity legislation has wobbled along over the years, 42 states have adopted their own versions of parity." However, "many providers have complained that insurance companies have often found it easy to deny benefits by ruling that claims are not 'medically necessary,' a potentially tough standard when it comes to ailments of the mind," she writes. According to Kershaw, "scientific advances may go a long way to help the parity cause" because the "biological and neurological connection lends strength to the notion that mental illnesses are as real and as urgent as physical illnesses and that there may, at long last, even be a cure in this lifetime, or the next." She continues, "And if you can cure something, you can treat it and there is a finite quality to that treatment -- and its costs" -- which could make insurers "more willing to pay for it."

According to Kershaw, supporters and opponents of mental health parity legislation approved in the House and Senate "both expect the negotiations over how to reconcile the two bills to be protracted." She writes that "in the halls of Congress, at least, the mind-body problem is far from resolved, particularly when it is uncertain who the next president will be" (Kershaw, New York Times, 3/30).

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