Letter from Reps. Roukema, Kennedy Asks Committee Chairs To Consider Mental Health Parity Legislation

Reps. Marge Roukema (R-N.J.) and Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) have sent a letter to House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Billy Tauzin (R-La.) and House Education and Workforce Committee Chair John Boehner (R-Ohio) asking for "swift consideration" of mental health parity legislation in their respective committees, CongressDaily reports (CongressDaily, 6/17). Roukema is the sponsor of the Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act of 2002 (HR 4066), which is identical to the parity bill (S 543) in the Senate (Roukema release, 4/30). The Senate passed the bill last year as part of the fiscal year 2002 Labor-HHS appropriations bill, but it was defeated in a House-Senate conference committee. Both bills would build on the 1996 mental health parity law, which prohibited health plans that cover mental illnesses from setting different annual and lifetime benefits for those illnesses than they do for physical illnesses, but does not prevent insurers from establishing higher deductibles or copayments for mental health benefits than for other medical conditions, a loophole that the new proposal seeks to eliminate (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 5/1).