Insurers, Behavioral Health Advocates Square Off Over Attempts to Influence Parity Bill in Congress

Opposition against Congressional efforts to boost mental health parity enforcement is apparently in full swing.

Politico reports that lobbyists and advocates aligned with the American insurance industry are trying to get ahead of the efforts by congressional Democrats to draft and build bipartisan support for two major proposals around parity

One proposal would give state governments tools to crack down on health plans that don’t comply with mental health parity rules. The other would allow the U.S. Department of Labor to levy fines of violative plans, the report states.

Congressional Democrats — who hold a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and shaky tie in the U.S. Senate — are looking for a legislative victory following unsuccessful efforts to pass Pres. Joe Biden’s voting rights and social spending reform agenda, the Politico report states. They hope to find resonance around the ever-worsening mental health crisis in the U.S.

About 101,000 Americans have died by drug overdose in the 12-month period ending in June 2021, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Youth mental health has declined precipitously enough to inspire U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to issue a 53-page report and advisory on the issue.

Murthy recently testified before the Senate Finance Committee, which will hold another meeting on mental health on Tuesday. The House Energy and Commerce Committee will also hold a meeting on the mental health crisis on Thursday. 

“These big insurance companies try to find every way they can to ratchet down coverage,” Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, told Politico. “This is a very profitable industry and so many people feel like they’re not getting much for their money other than a lot of jazz at the other end of the phone.”

On the insurer’s side, advocates claim that the insurers are unfairly and falsely being targeted for the mental health crisis. Politico reports that these groups blame providers for by and large not accepting insurance and claim that parity enforcement would raise premium rates for all.

“When you have an access problem that is as complicated and multifaceted as mental health care, it would be wonderful if we could find a single silver bullet solution that would solve it,” Kristine Grow, senior vice president of communications for the lobbying group America’s Health Insurance Plans, told Politico. “But that’s just not the reality.”

The impetus for a lot of the movement around parity at the federal level was the release of a new report by The U.S. Labor Department, Health and Human Services Department and Department of the Treasury that detailed frequent failings by insurers to abide by laws that require insurers to treat behavioral health in the same way that it treats physical health.

On the executive side of the federal government, Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said that the agency is committed to ensuring mental health parity as a way of achieving greater health equity in the U.S.