Boring But Important: The Latest on Insurance Parity
From NAMI national:
Agreement is in Place on Mental Illness Insurance Parity
August 7, 2008
Separate mental health insurance parity bills have passed the Senate (on September 18, 2007) and the House (on March 5, 2008) by wide bipartisan margins. The bills (S 558 and HR 1424) were never far apart on substance, and in the end negotiations centered on narrow issues such as parity in out-of-network coverage and notice to plan enrollees in cases where a group health plan seeks a temporary exemption from the parity requirement.
The major provisions in the legislation were nearly identical in both bills and are preserved in the agreement:
* Equity for mental illness and substance abuse coverage with respect to numerical limits on inpatient and outpatient services – no more arbitrary limits on inpatient and outpatient coverage that do not also apply to medical-surgical coverage,
* Equity for mental illness and substance abuse coverage with respect to financial limitations – a ban on higher cost sharing, deductibles and out-of-pocket limits that do not also apply to medical-surgical coverage, and
* A parity standard in the federal ERISA law thereby covering the 82 million Americans in ERISA self-insured group health plans (with 50 employees or more) that are exempt from complying with the 42 state parity laws.
liz | 10:47 AM | Uncategorized
Painter Speaks Out About Depression and Doctors
I wish I had gotten this woman’s name. She’s standing here in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia, answering my questions: Do you believe depression is real? Do you have confidence in your doctor? I think her answers are perfect.
liz | 1:06 PM | Uncategorized
This Is Your Brain on NAMI
Thanks to Joe for sending me this NAMI poster. Joe writes:
Sadly, this is the message being taught to children. One can only imagine what the internalization of this message does to children who are coping with a MI and the perceptions it fosters among their peers.
liz | 11:56 AM | Uncategorized
URGENT: Robert Hazard R.I.P.
I was hoping it was a rumor, but the Inquirer has confirmed the news: Philly rocker Robert Hazard has indeed passed away at 59. I used to loooooove Robert Hazard. He figured prominently in my girlhood dreams. When his EP came out, it became dog-eared quickly. There’s more to Hazard and his career, I realize, but this was my 1982.
This is at Dobbs! Philly in my youth.
This was his first MTV video.
This is him performing the same song with the Paul Green School of Rock kids. Proof that he was a nice guy.
liz | 5:17 PM | Uncategorized
Song of the Day, and Blog News
I Don’t Do Sadness (from the musical Spring Awakening)
Also, PW debuted its new music blog today. It’s called Make Major Moves, and it’s by Brian McManus. Check it out!
liz | 4:45 PM | Uncategorized
Derivative, Repetitive, Cut-and-Paste Journalism
Here we go again. Another story with the headline that ECT is “making a comeback.” Unbelievable. That phrase has been employed by so many news agencies and scientific journals in the past years, it’s meaningless. In fact, as John McMan wrote on his McManWeb in May of last year, “During the early nineties, the media began observing that ECT was making a quiet comeback.” This has literally been the media spin for 18 years.
Other outlets that have observed ECT making a comeback in the past:
Psychiatric Times
Pasadena Star-News
The Daily Telegraph
Newsday
The New York Times
Associated Press
USA Today
Wired
UPI
Time
Newsweek
I could go on and on.
Why was this piece written? There’s nothing new in it. Everything has been said before, down to pat phrases and sentences. It’s like it was written after its author got a press release from a medical center or doctor who practices ECT. And keep in mind: The ECT industry is no more ethical than Big Pharma. So that’s what you’re dealing with.
Shock therapy makes a quiet comeback
liz | 10:58 AM | Uncategorized
Remembering a Good Friend
When I found my beloved Tinsel had died, I was so distraught. He was a wonderful, soulful pet. He even made the pages of Philadelphia magazine and the cover of Philadelphia Weekly.
It was a cold day, and I had my coat on because I was leaving to go to work. As soon as I realized he had passed, I got out my camera to take a photo of him in my hand for the last time — a memento mori. Hey, it’s not Annie Leibovitz’s photos of Susan Sontag, but I just found this image and it made me remember my old friend.
liz | 4:30 PM | Uncategorized
Overdiagnosing Kids With Bipolar Disorder, Part 546
Bonnie Harris, M.S.Ed,. is the director of Connective Parenting. She is the author of “When Your Kids Push Your Buttons” and “Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids.”
In her latest column, she takes on the issue of childhood bipolar diagnoses and medication by quoting a doctor who says bipolar “has become a catchall for aggressive and troubled children.” In response, she writes:
Please, let this report be a red flag to all who have children too quickly diagnosed with ADHD, bipolar disorder, oppositional defiant disorder and others. A young child claiming that no one loves him, that he’s stupid, hates himself, or wishes he could die is often a child who is crying out for acceptance and attention from the influential adults in his life who have yet to understand him and his problems. With that understanding, adjusted expectations, removal of damaging behavior modification techniques such as punishment, many children, even those with chemical imbalances and disorders, can have appropriate behavior without medication. …
We must look to the reasons — the root causes — of why our children don’t, won’t or can’t do what we ask. Diagnoses often feel validating and relieving when our attempts at control don’t work to get our children to comply. We can shift the blame onto to “problem” and we don’t have to change how we parent.
… Please lets start to put more effort into understanding children, their temperaments, the reasons for their behavior, their need for acceptance and compassion, their desire to get it right and their frustrations when they can’t. Let’s not medicate those frustrations before thorough evaluations can be conducted by several professionals looking at the behavior from different perspectives.
Rock it, Bonnie!
To read the rest, go here.
liz | 1:16 PM | Uncategorized
Nothing Galvanizes the Troops Like a Big Pharma Debate
Over at Feministe, Amanda W. got a whole lotta responses to a post she did saying meds were okay and people shoudn’t judge others who take them. She wrote:
People pull out the Scary Statistics about drug use, for this or that medical condition or this or that group of drugs, using those numbers to make a point about Big Pharma or to insist that the people taking that drug could just do some yoga and be like, totally cured of their debilitating depression!
As a society, we have a complex about this whole drug thing. We have no problem with modifying our brain’s regulation of certain chemicals streaming through our blood with the intent of altering this or that function when the thing doing the modifying is, say, food, or physical activity, or orgasm, or incense, or sun exposure, or, hey, sleep! But when you cut out the middle man people start getting all jumpy. ….
The medical and pharmaceutical fields are incredibly problematic industries. They do some seriously corrupt and scary stuff. They should most certainly be more strongly regulated; they are already founded on the concepts of capitalism and profit, which are hard to reconcile with help and aid to those in need, and then we go and give them a practically unlimited leash on which to roam, which, well, causes problems.
But you know what? All that shit doesn’t mean that the products of their deviance and manipulation don’t actually help actual people, right now.
I know how advertising works. I know that the path to riches in marketing rests upon creating a need and then providing a product or service to fill it. I’m not fucking stupid.
And I’m also not a fucking dupe.
It is possible to simultaneously loathe some of the things a person or group does while not stepping on the toes of millions of people who have actually derived benefit from the services of that person or group.
Because, fucking hell, people, my feet are damn well shattered at this point and you’re working your way up my shin.
Her stridency didn’t sit well with some of her readers, who left comments like this:
Did it ever occur to you, that perhaps people who are anti-medication are that way for legitimate reasons?
Rather than attempt to hone your psychic prowess (or lack thereof) and tell them what they’re thinking, how about ask?
Instead of assuming people who are anti-meds are these perfect, healthy people looking down on those that aren’t, figure that maybe these are people who understand the situation more intimately than you imagine?
I have what would be considered incredibly bad depression? Do I take Prozac? No. Fucking. Way.
Oh, but wait, how can this be? Someone WITH said condition, refusing said treatment? That sort of goes against your entire rant, doesn’t it?
Another commenter wrote:
For myself, I have an extreme distaste for medications, yes. I think Big Pharama, as you said, is corrupt. I think they feed us a lot of stuff we don’t really need and act as though it’s vital. I think they do things purposefully to undermine alternative treatments to various diseases and ailments.
… My perspective on this was formed early when I realized if I didn’t treat the symptoms of my yearly colds, but instead helped my body recover from them (vit C + echinecea and/or astralagus versus you know, Advil Cold) my infections were cut in MORE than HALF.
This early experience fueled an interest in learning more about medicine and the toxic chemicals in products I’d been led to believe were vital to my survival (toothpaste, shampoo, antiperspirant…) What I found is that Western medicine is gravely flawed in this regard. It is obsessed with symptoms instead of treatment of causes.
Having to take medication to sleep? To me that’s a strong reinforcement to the idea that we are becoming more and more a seriously over stressed people. That the demands of daily life are too high. It has certainly been shown that stress and sleep are related. I don’t have a problem necessarily with people treating their inability to sleep with meds (though before popping pills I’d rather smoke a bowl…) it’s that we’re having a harder time sleeping that worries ME.
There’s more — comments from people who feels their lives have been saved by meds, comments from people who think meds are bunkum. It’s an interesting discussion. I recommend it particularly after having received an email from a guy who only writes in all caps:
YOU ARE A FUCKING BIG PHARMA SHILL AND A LIAR.
STOP PERPETUATING PSYCHIATRY’S FUCKING MYTHS YOU FUCKING BITCH.
YOU HAVE NO FUCKING EVIDENCE YOU HAVE A FUCKING BRAIN DISEASE.
YOUR FUCKING ‘DISEASE’ WAS ‘DIAGNOSED’ WITH NO OBJECTIVE DIAGNOSTIC BIOTECHNOLOGY.
YOU ARE KILLING KIDS WITH YOUR FUCKING LIES.
I WOULDN’T BE SURPRISED IF THEY ARE PAYING YOU, YOU ASTROTURFING TURD.
THE SOONER YOUR HYSTRIONICS AND NEUROTIC FUCKING DRAMATICS CAUSE YOU TO REALLY FUCK YOURSELF UP, THE BETTER.
I love this job.
liz | 10:51 AM | Uncategorized
I’ve Discovered the Secret to Philadelphia’s Beauty!
This weekend V. and I played host to two of our favorite people, Glenn (two n’s, right Glenn?) and Nina. They live in New York, though they lived for a long time in the Midwest. It’s always interesting to see your town reflected in the touristic prism, so I was bowled over when Nina was impressed by the cleanliness of the SEPTA stations. And you know what? The blue line station floors are so clean you could throw your soft pretzel onto them and then not eat it but feel stupid for not eating it! We took the El from 40th Street to Second Street, and both those stations were immaculate. To Nina, a native New Yorker, it looked like SEPTA was awesome.
Glenn was surprised (and slightly appalled) when I invoked the ol’ Philly-Detroit comparison chestnut. He’s been here several times, but hasn’t traveled deep South, West or North. And I had a realization: Philly looks great if visitors don’t go south of South Street, West of 48th, and north of Fairmount. (Of course, the northern boundaries are very confusing depending on how far west/east. But you get the idea.) If you keep your guests in this (quite large) area, they will think the city is charming, beautiful and livable, and has lots of character and even some happy diversity. So much so that they’ll find it hard to believe that much of the city makes The Wire’s housing projects look like the Ritz-Carlton.
So GPTMC, if you’re listening, this is the secret: Stay within the happy boundaries! And speaking of boundaries, PW’s article on Southwest Philly had letter-writers and commenters hopping. Check it out here.
[Photos of Kensington -- don't take your friends there! -- by Geoffrey See, who I hope won't be mad at me. Check out his cool blog.]
liz | 2:32 PM | Uncategorized
