Mental Health Parirty Act of 2007

Floor Speech

MENTAL HEALTH PARITY ACT OF 2007 -- (Senate - September 18, 2007)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, today the Senate takes a long overdue step in the right direction for the health of all Americans. The passage of the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007 recognizes the millions of people living with a mental illness and the millions of friends, family members, and communities who support them.

Mental health parity legislation simply calls for health plans to provide comparable levels of coverage for mental health services as are provided for traditional medical services. It doesn't sound like a radical proposal, yet it has taken years to move this legislation through the Senate.

We have made progress, though, and much of the leadership on this issue has been provided by Senator KENNEDY and Senator DOMENICI in recent years. We started in 1992, when my good friend, the late Senator Paul Wellstone, and Senator PETE DOMENICI introduced the Mental Health Parity Act to correct the unfair burden placed on American families living with mental illness without access to mental health services.

It took a while, but in 1996, the first mental health parity legislation was enacted into law. It wasn't a perfect bill. It fell far short of its goal in many respects, but it was a significant piece of legislation that acknowledged the longstanding bias against covering mental health services.

Based on what we did in 1996, current law requires insurers that offer mental health care to offer comparable benefit caps for mental health and physical health. Unfortunately, that left a loophole that has allowed the common practice in which insurers set higher deductibles, charge higher copays, and cover fewer services for mental health care. As a result, millions of Americans are left without affordable mental health treatment. What they are left with is the often crushing aftermath--loss of employment, poor school performance, poverty, and even suicide.

Every year since that 1996 law was enacted, the Senate has had a mental health parity bill to fix this problem, but to no avail. This year, for the first time in a decade, the Senate has passed a bill to address the loopholes in the mental health parity law. I commend Senators KENNEDY and DOMENICI for their dedication to seeing this through. I only wish that Paul Wellstone could have lived to see this day.

Paul Wellstone was a good friend of mine and an inspiration to me and to many others who served with him in the Chamber. Throughout his congressional career, Paul fought tirelessly for equal rights for all, regardless of their race, religion, socioeconomic status, or health status. He was a champion of many causes, but no cause was more dear, or more personal, to him than making sure that people with mental illness were treated fairly and with dignity.

Paul Wellstone was touched personally by mental illness. His older brother lived and struggle with mental illness most of his life. Paul believed that for his brother, and for all Americans, mental health was as important as physical health. Senator PETE DOMENICI, too, understands the importance of having access to mental health services. His daughter also has struggled with mental illness.

Fifteen years ago, Senators Wellstone and Domenici brought home a fact that is as true today as it was then--nearly everyone knows someone living with a mental illness. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than one in four adults in the United States--more than 57 million adults--suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. One in seventeen Americans suffers from a serious mental illness.

These two Senators were fiercely determined to end discrimination against people with mental illness. We all lost a spirited champion for mental health on October 25, 2002, when Paul Wellstone was in a fatal plane crash. But the fight for mental health parity has lived on. Senator Kennedy quickly took up the fight, and he and Senator Domenici have resolutely worked to strengthen common ground and supporters who would bring us to this day, the day of Senate passage of the mental health parity bill.

Last year, the Senate passed a resolution I submitted that marked the fourth anniversary of Paul Wellstone's death. The resolution expresses the sense of the Senate that Congress should act ``to provide for equal coverage of mental health benefits with respect to health insurance coverage''--in other words, pass mental health parity.

I am proud to note the Senate's action today. With the passage of the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007, we are assuring millions of Americans that mental illness deserves equal treatment as physical illness. We are telling millions of families that help is available and that they no longer have to feel excluded. And most importantly, we are opening doors to hope and closing doors to desperation.

We may not live in a perfect world but we are closer to a more perfect union. It is in the spirit of Paul Wellstone and--thanks to Senators Kennedy and Domenici--the spirit of bipartisanship that we pass this historic piece of legislation. Senator Wellstone was quoted as saying:

I don't think politics has anything to do with left, right, or center. It has to do with trying to do right by the people.

Today, I think Paul would agree that the Senate has done right.

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