Congress created parity provisions for mental health coverage over a decade ago. However, critics say they lacked the necessary teeth to make payers fear the bite violating those laws.
The road to true behavioral health parity will take buy-in from various stakeholders, including payers, providers, employers and advocates. In order to make this happen former Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, who served as a Democrat from Rhode Island, is calling on multiple advocacy groups joining forces to create clear priorities for the future of the industry.
“We’re going to launch a five-year effort to build this movement … where we coalesce all the advocacy groups,” Kennedy, who is also the founder of The Kennedy Forum, said at the Behavioral Health Business VALUE conference. “And we bring mental health and addiction, all together around a set of definable priorities that we can all get behind, hold members of Congress to, hold state legislatures and executive branches to — because this is going to take a sophisticated level of policy development.”
The Kennedy Forum is a nonprofit organization that unites mental health advocates, business leaders, health plans and government agencies on behavioral health and substance use disorder practices, policies, and programming.
Kennedy called for more safety measures to be put in place around behavioral health parity.
“The cars that are manufactured today wouldn’t have seatbelts, wouldn’t be designed in safer ways if it weren’t for Ralph Nader, and the government regulations trying to mandate greater protection,” Kennedy said. “But in mental health, there are no seatbelts mandated.”
There have been several attempts by Congress to bolster parity enforcement.
For example, the Mental Health Matters Act, which would allow the U.S. The Department of Labor (DOL) to enforce provisions and make it easier to sue payers over behavioral health claims, passed through the House but failed to make it through the Senate.
Parity reform efforts continue. Earlier this month, two Democratic senators proposed changes to the Social Security Act that could help ensure parity and integration of behavioral health in government health plans.
Buy-in from multiple stakeholders
Moving the dial on behavioral health parity will take more than just action from Congress.
Kennedy argued that the lack of parity in mental health could cost corporations in the long term.
Big companies could be losing millions of dollars thanks to mental health issues impacting worker absenteeism and productivity, incentivizing them to get on board with parity.
“What’s not integrated is the impact on the workplace, which is an existential issue for every major employer in this country, given the churn and employment, all of which is going to be fueled, especially [with] Gen X and Gen Z, by addressing mental health conditions,” he said. “So that is such a huge cost that’s not factored into any of the discussions … in terms of the value of mental health.”
It’s unlikely that corporate America will start leaning on payers to cover more services if it means extra costs until there is concrete data.
Kennedy noted this is something that the industry could use more of in the future.
“We as an advocacy community do not have a brain trust here in Washington that’s churning out all that data from a Mehlman or McKinsey saying that this is a no-brainer to invest more in mental health because of the downstream impact,” Kennedy said. “Because we don’t have that data. But the only reason we don’t have that data, as others have suggested, is that this is such a nascent period in the development of mental health public policy.”
This data could show that treating behavioral health conditions has long-term savings on the medical side and in the workplace.
This is where Kennedy’s new efforts to coalesce advocacy groups and industry stakeholders comes in. He noted that many of these groups are fragmented but teaming up to prove the importance of parity and have clear goals could move the dial.
“We need, as a community, a much better representation to the government about a more sophisticated policy approach,” he said.
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