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WELLSTONE MENTAL Photos from the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equality Celebration, November 17, 2008, in Washington DC.
This op-ed was published in the July 18, 2007, edition of The Washington Times. If you were diagnosed with a brain tumor, would you seek treatment or would you ignore it and hope it goes away? Would your answer differ according to whether your health insurance covered treatment? A diagnosis such as a brain tumor, or Parkinson's disease, is a serious matter. Just as serious are the diagnoses of mental illnesses and addictions. But depending on the location of the illness in your body, the decision to seek treatment may be harder to make. Mental health and addiction patients are discriminated against because employers and insurers often do not classify these disorders as diseases of the brain. Yet we know after decades of brain research that they indeed are diseases, and that effective treatments exist. As it stands now, health insurers offer coverage and reimbursement if you need cancer therapy or treatment for Parkinson's disease, heart disease, diabetes or any other physical illness. But if you are diagnosed with a mental illness or need treatment for an addiction, you are likely to face unequal and unfair insurance barriers that can be catastrophic to your health, your financial security and even your life. This is unconscionable. Patients affected by these disorders should be treated with the same urgency and diligence as patients with any other disease, and should receive the same health-care options and coverage. After 12 years, Wellstone mental health parity act is law
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