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National Mental Health Association Statement to the Media
February 1, 2006

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (February 1, 2006)—President Bush, in the State of the Union yesterday, asserted that this country requires affordable health care. The National Mental Health Association could not agree more. With health care costs continuing to soar, systems of care buckling and working Americans, as well as the poor, increasingly experiencing health care insecurity, our nation has clearly reached a boiling point. It is high time we focus on health care—including mental health care—and develop real solutions.

In establishing the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health in 2002, President Bush stated that many Americans fall through the cracks of the current mental health system, and called on the Commission to make concrete recommendations for immediate improvements to be implemented by federal and state government. In its own assessment, the Commission advised the President that the “Nation’s failure to prioritize mental health is a national tragedy.”

However, we have not yet progressed in remedying this tragedy, and have instead further threatened vulnerable Americans by weakening the systems they rely on for care—particularly Medicaid and private health insurance.

Regrettably, key health proposals in the State of the Union not only fail to offer credible solutions but threaten to weaken further the nation’s health-security infrastructure. We must come together as a nation to provide that security by identifying and supporting structural and financing reforms to improve access to treatment and services and the well-being of all Americans.
MEDICAID

Attacks on Medicaid in the name of cost containment irresponsibly weaken an essential safety net for us all. Vulnerable Americans—those with disabling chronic illnesses and limited financial means—are being asked to bear the overwhelming burden of Medicaid cost-cutting. Yet, Medicaid is a safety net for every American—all of us could fall prey to debilitating illness, profound injury, a catastrophic event or the difficulties of old age. As the experience in many states shows, slashing funding and restricting access to services under Medicaid inevitably result in people becoming sicker and, thus, in even greater costs arising from increased emergency care, homelessness, incarceration and even death.

PRIVATE HEALTH PLANS

Policies that weaken rather than strengthen the health insurance system, such as providing new incentives to establish health savings accounts and association health plans, will ultimately diminish Americans’ health security. Freeing association health plans of critical state regulatory protections and fostering health savings accounts encourage healthy individuals to abandon traditional group health insurance, leading to far-higher costs for those with chronic illnesses whose needs would not be met by these now-favored devices. We must not abandon Americans with the greatest health needs in our efforts to find lower-cost health insurance options.

MEDICARE

Although the new Medicare prescription drug program was intended to provide vitally needed medications to seniors and people with disabilities, the structure of this benefit is overly complex and in desperate need of reform. Failures in the auto-enrollment of “dual eligibles” (poor and chronically ill individuals who until this year had received drug coverage through Medicaid), have robbed vulnerable individuals of much-needed care. Many have been wrongfully denied medications which had stabilized their health—despite clear direction from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services that plans must provide access to “all or substantially all” mental health medications. Others have been wrongfully charged high co-pays and deductibles they cannot afford. Still other beneficiaries are struggling to make sense of this unnecessarily confusing program. But, the President’s remarks ignored these concerns. The millions of older Americans who continue to weigh enrollment in this new program not only require more help from the federal government to understand the benefit, but help from Congress in restructuring it.

NMHA and its national network plan to work with Congress and the Administration to achieve the broad goal of affordable health care for all Americans reflected in the President’s remarks as well the goals of the President’s New Freedom Commission on Mental Health. Sound, bipartisan solutions exist.

liz | 5:25 PM | Uncategorized