[Vision2020] Urgent: Mental Health Parity

[Saundra Lund]

Visionaries,

For those interested in ensuring mental health parity in health care to end
unconscionable discrimination, please contact Congressman Otter (by letter,
phone call, or email) to urge that he support Discharge Petition #18.
Congressman Otter's contact info is:
The Honorable C. L. "Butch" Otter 
1711 Longworth 
Washington, D.C. 20515 

(202) 225-6611

His Web site provides an interface for contacting him via email:
http://otter.house.gov/contact_information.aspx

For those who've missed my earlier emails on the subject and/or are
unfamiliar with the discrimination in mental health care and benefits, I'm
including some background information I received via email from the Child &
Adolescent Bipolar Foundation (http://www.bpkids.org/)  this morning:

" - For more than six years, there's been a bill in the House of
Representatives which would end mental health insurance benefits
discrimination. 
  - For three Congresses in a row, a bipartisan majority in the House has
co-sponsored this bill.
  - In six years, it has never even been allowed to have a vote in
committee. 

Your action can help bring this bill to a vote!

The Paul Wellstone Mental Health Equitable Treatment Act (H.R. 1402) has
been endorsed by 229 members of Congress- more than enough bipartisan
support to ensure its passage.  However, the bill has never been brought to
a floor vote.   Under House rules, the bill cannot be voted on until it is
brought to the floor.  

Last week, the co-sponsors of H.R. 1402, Representatives Jim Ramstad (R-MN)
and Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), introduced a "discharge petition" that would
automatically bring H.R. 1402 to the floor for a vote.  If Discharge
Petition #18 receives 218 signatures before the final adjournment of this
Congress at the end of the year, then H.R. 1402 will come to the floor for a
vote.

In just two days 165 signatures were on the petition. To get the remaining
53 signatures, your action is needed.  Please call or write your Congressman
today and ask for your representative's signature on Discharge Petition #18.


H.R. 1402 would expand the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 by prohibiting
group health plans from imposing treatment or financial limitations on
mental health benefits that are different from those applied to
medical/surgical services. The legislation closes the loopholes that allow
discrimination in the co-payment, coinsurance, deductible, maximum
out-of-pocket limit and day and visit limits. It applies only to group
health plans already providing mental health benefits, and excludes (as does
current law) health plans sponsored by employers of fewer than 50 people.
Please call or email your congressman's office today and ask for support of
Discharge Petition #18.

Here is a sample of what you might say:   

I am one of your constituents and I support HR 1402. I am calling to urge
Rep. ______ to sign Discharge petition #18 to bring HR 1402 to a floor vote.
I support a child with pediatric bipolar disorder and this legislation is
extremely important to my family. Millions of Americans have brain illness.
When you return to Congress in November, will you sign that petition so that
we can finally have a fair vote to end discrimination in heath care?"

Please join me in urging Congressman Otter to support Discharge Petition #18
to get HR 1402 to the floor for a fair vote!


Saundra Lund
Moscow, ID

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do
nothing.
- Edmund Burke

***** Original material contained herein is Copyright 2006, Saundra Lund.
Do not copy, forward, excerpt, or reproduce outside the Vision 2020 forum
without the express written permission of the author.*****