U.S. President George W. Bush made headlines this summer when he endorsed

the idea that private insurers should treat mental health services no differently

than medical or surgical care when it comes to coverage. The announcement and

a June rally at the U.S. Capitol drew more than 2,000 parity supporters and raised

the hopes of mental health advocates that there might finally be sufficient

momentum to force lawmakers to act on parity this session.

To date, however, efforts to move the legislation through Congress have gotten

nowhere. A June hearing renewed interest in parity legislation, but the Mental

Health Equitable Treatment Act’s future in the House of Representatives is far

from certain. The bill (H.R. 4066) is co-sponsored by U.S. Representative Marge

Roukema, a Republican from New Jersey, and Representative Patrick Kennedy, a

Democrat from Rhode Island, and is supported by more than 230 national

organizations. So far, opposition by committee members and House leaders has

stalled the bill, despite the bipartisan support of 240 U.S. Representatives.

Opponents of the bill claim a Federal mandate on mental health parity would

send health care premiums skyrocketing, despite Congressional budget office

estimates to the contrary. The CBO estimates the increase at less than one percent.

The most contentious issue, however, is whether to provide full parity for all

mental health disorders or to provide parity to only severe "biologically-based"

disorders. When he was governor of Texas, President Bush signed a considerably

more limited parity law that covered only "severe mental illnesses." According to

mental health advocates, limiting the scope of parity legislation would arbitrarily

discriminate against people with some forms of mental illness.

Prospects are somewhat brighter in the Senate, where parity legislation has

already been approved in committee. With Congress facing an increasingly

crowded legislative agenda and few days left to complete its work, speculation is

that Senator Pete Domenici, a Republican from New Mexico, may attach the

legislation (S. 543) to a must-pass appropriations bill to increase its prospects for

enactment this year.

Senators Domenici and Paul Wellstone, a Democrat from Minnesota,

introduced the Senate’s parity bill earlier this year.

The Children’s Health Act after extensive committee negotiations, passed the

U.S. House and Senate overwhelmingly in September 2000. In the Senate, where

there was unanimous support, it had 21 co-sponsors, the result of a bipartisan

effort between U.S. Senator Frist from Tennessee and Senator Edward Kennedy, a

Democrat representing Massachusetts.

It authorized an additional $600 million per year in funding for programs to

improve children’s health and research, day care safety and youth drug abuse and

violence. Specifically, it called for amending the Public Health Service Act to

improve children’s health research and prevention programs conducted through

Federal public health agencies. And it called for providing grants to states to reauthorize

programs with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services

Administration (SAMHSA) to improve mental health and substance abuse

services.

The law’s provision for National Institute of Health (NIH) based pediatric

research initiative authorized up to $50 million for biomedical research grants