House Should Vote on Treatment Parity Bill

HOUSE SHOULD VOTE ON TREATMENT PARITY BILL -- (House of Representatives - December 19, 2007)

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ramstad) is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. RAMSTAD. Mr. Speaker, with 54 million Americans suffering the ravages of mental illness and 26 million suffering from chemical addiction, the failure of this Congress to pass the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act is a slap in the face to millions of Americans with mental illness and/or drug and alcohol addiction. It's also the biggest failure of this session of Congress.

Congress' failure to knock down the discriminatory barriers to treatment is a matter of life or death for people suffering from mental health and addiction diseases, diseases that took the lives of over 200,000 Americans last year alone.

Just 2 weeks ago, my friend of over 25 years took his own life as a result of depression. He joined 34,000 other Americans who have committed suicide from depression this year.

In my home State of Minnesota, Anna Westin was a young woman with anorexia. She suffered for several years from this terrible disease. Her parents' insurance company refused to cover the inpatient treatment that she desperately needed. Distraught at her condition and being a financial burden on her parents, young Anna took her own life.

Representative PATRICK KENNEDY and I held 14 field hearings across our country this year on the need to end insurance discrimination against mental illness and addiction. We heard story after story after story like these.

We heard from Steve Winter, who traveled in his wheelchair to several of our field hearings. When Steve was a young teenager, he awoke one morning with a stinging pain in his back. He stumbled downstairs to breakfast. He realized that blood was streaming down his back. He heard his mother's voice say, ``Your sister is in heaven, and now you and I are going there to join her.'' His mother was pointing a gun at him. She had been taken off the schizophrenia drugs she desperately needed. As Steve put it, ``My mother didn't shoot my sister and me; her mental illness did.''

Clearly there are not many families in America, Mr. Speaker, who haven't been touched in some way by mental illness or addiction. Like my close personal friend, like Anna Westin and Steve Winter's sister, I could have been one of the thousands of Americans who die each year from mental illness and chemical addiction.

For on July 31, 1981, I awoke in a jail cell in Sioux Falls, South Dakotathe result of my last alcoholic blackout after abusing alcohol for 12 long and painful years. I'm alive and sober today, Mr. Speaker, only because of the access I had to treatment in 1981. I'm living proof that treatment works and recovery is real.

But too many people don't have that access to treatment. It's a national disgrace that 270,000 Americans were denied addiction treatment last year. It's a national tragedy that 160,000 of our fellow Americans died from chemical addiction and 34,000 died from suicide as a result of their depression. And it's also, Mr. Speaker, a national crisis that untreated addiction and mental illness cost our economy over $550 billion last year.

And what is Congress' response? Despite bipartisan passage by three House committees and two subcommittees, we were denied a vote in the full House on the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.

This legislation would give Americans suffering from addiction greater access to treatment by prohibiting health insurers from placing discriminatory barriers on treatment. As many as 16 million Americans in health plans could receive treatment under this act.

Despite the 273 cosponsors of H.R. 1424, this treatment parity bill, no vote was held. Despite the tens of millions of Americans suffering the ravages of addiction and mental illness, no vote was allowed to increase their access to lifesaving treatment.

Mr. Speaker, it is time to end the discrimination against people suffering from mental illness and chemical addiction. It's time to end the higher copayments, deductibles, out-of-pocket costs, and limited treatment stays, discriminatory barriers to treatment that don't exist for any other diseases. It's time to treat mental illness and chemical addiction under the same rules as physical illnesses.

Mr. Speaker, it's time for the House of Representatives to vote on the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act. Those still suffering cannot afford to wait any longer.

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