[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 191 (Thursday, December 13, 2007)]
[House]
[Pages H15449-H15453]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
MENTAL HEALTH PARITY NOW
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 18, 2007, the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Kennedy) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. Speaker, this evening I have an opportunity to
address an issue that our country has long seen unaddressed in the many
years that we have tackled many issues but failed to address the
underlying issue that we seek to talk about this evening. We have just
heard many people talk about the issue of gun violence. We have had
many people talk about drug smuggling. Well, these are just two
examples of the issue that we are going to talk about tonight, in the
examples that point to the fact that we are failing to address the
underlying problem.
The issue of gun violence, we fail to address the underlying problems
of violence in our society when we fail to address the underpinnings of
violence. What is it that created the mind of that young man in Omaha
that led him to act out in such a way that led to the death so
tragically of those innocent people in the mall in Omaha, Nebraska? Why
was it that he could not get the help that he needed such that he had
to act out in such a way? Why was it that he had to resort to violence?
Why is it in this country that homicide amongst young people is the
second leading cause of death for young people? Why is it that suicide
is the third leading cause of death for young people 15 to 24?
It is important to ask these questions because if we do, we start to
dig below the surface of these questions about whether the issue is
really about simply the question of whether we are talking about
locking people up or addressing a more fundamental problem and that is
addressing people's needs in this country which aren't going to be
addressed simply by locking them up, but rather by, as was just
addressed by Mr. Payne from New Jersey, addressing these problems
before they become problems.
What we are here tonight to talk about is addressing people's
emotional and mental health needs in this country so that as a Nation
we don't have our criminal justice system become the mental health
system that it has become in our society.
We as a country incarcerate more people in this country of ours than
any other free country on the face of the Earth. We imprison more
people in this country than any other free country on the Earth. It
begs the question, why is it that America, which calls itself the land
of the free, why do we jail so many people? We jail so many people
because we fail to get ourselves prepared to come to grips with the
violence in our society. We jail so many people in this country because
we fail to come to grips with the drug epidemic in our society.
You just heard Mr. Poe from Texas talk about Border Patrol and the
fact that these border agents are being held in jail because of drug
smuggling charges and the problems that they have in interdicting drug
smugglers. We heard from Ms. Jackson-Lee about the problem of charging
criminals, the disparity in sentencing between crack cocaine and powder
cocaine and how disparate the charges are.
We are talking around the issue. We are talking around the issue. The
issue is: What are we doing as a Nation to address this as a health
problem that it is? Why in the world would people choose to keep using
drugs if they know it is going to end up putting them in jail? Why
would people continue to use drugs when they know it is going to cause
them to either die or lose their families or lose their lives? But that
is what it does to millions of Americans every year, and yet people
continue to go on using.
Why do they go on using? Because this is an addiction. Because this
is a physical disease, because this is a compulsion of the mind, of the
body of the soul. And unless our country comes to grips with treating
this disease for what it is, and that is a physical illness, like every
other physical illness, then we as a society will not begin to address
all of the other problems that we hear our colleagues come to the floor
this evening to talk about.
We will fail to address the criminal justice problems. We will fail
to find a way to deal with the incarceration problems. We will fail to
find a way to deal with the drug smuggling problems. We will fail to
find a way to deal with the violence problems if we don't first find a
way to address the fundamental problem of treating people's physical
illness which drives them to use drugs and alcohol which forces them
into these situations which create the underpinnings of violence that
create these problems in the first place.
Now many people say, Well, when people use drugs, that is their
choice. It is a moral failing on the person's part if they get
addicted. We know better now. We have done scans of the brain and we
have done research and we have shown that a brain is an organ of the
body, like every other organ of the body. And in fact just like
somebody may have diabetes and if they get low sugar and they eat candy
bars in order to get that sugar up, for many people who have
depression, they use drugs to get their serotonin levels up, to get
their neuroepinephrine up, to get their chemicals up in their brain
[[Page H15450]]
that are unusually low because of the way their brain is constructed.
So they use drugs because they are looking for a way to get themselves
back up, and that is the way that they try to compensate for their
depression.
Many people have bipolar disorder, like myself. Initially, I used
drugs in order to make myself whole again. I got addicted. I am
fortunate because I got treatment. Now I am able to get medication and
I am able to live a life that is free from addiction because of that
treatment. As a result, today I am able to live a free life. But for
many people in this country, they don't have that freedom because they
don't have that opportunity to get treatment. Why? Because their
insurance plans in this country, unlike Members of Congress, do not
cover addiction treatment. Their insurance plans do not treat the brain
like an organ in the body. As a result, they are denied treatment for
their addiction; and as a result, many of them do not survive.
My friends, that is why my friend Congressman Ramstad and myself have
been working so hard to see that we pass the Paul Wellstone Mental
Health Parity Act in the United States Congress that would do away with
the discrimination against this disease called addiction because we
feel so strongly that people with addictions, illnesses that are mental
illnesses, are no different than illnesses like any other illness of
the body. They are just physical illnesses in the brain as opposed to
physical illnesses in some other part of the body. And they are no
different than any other part of the body. It is just that they are
above the shoulders. But insurance companies don't treat these
illnesses the same for insurance purposes, and that is what we want to
see end. We want to see the discrimination against mental illnesses
end, and this is about ending that discrimination.
We have stories this evening that we want to share telling about what
we have learned in our tour around the country about how this issue is
affecting millions of Americans.
At this time, I yield to Jim Ramstad who has been a champion of this
issue during his many years in Congress and whose leadership on this
issue has been second to none and whom I am proud to have worked with
in this Congress on this issue. Jim, it has been a pleasure to work
with you.
Mr. RAMSTAD. I thank my friend and colleague from Rhode Island for
yielding, and I thank him for his outstanding leadership as co-Chair
with me of the Addiction Treatment and Recovery Caucus, for his
outstanding leadership on the parity legislation, and every other piece
of legislation dealing with mental illness and addiction.
I also want to thank my friend and colleague from Rhode Island for
the inspiration he has been to literally hundreds of thousands, perhaps
millions, of Americans because of his own honesty, candor, because of
the example he has been. By going public with his own story, he has
impacted the lives of countless Americans.
Mr. Speaker, as my friend from Rhode Island knows, and many of my
friends here know, on July 31, 1981, I woke up in a jail cell in Sioux
Falls, South Dakota, under arrest from my last alcoholic blackout as a
result of my last alcoholic episode. I had abused alcohol for 12 long
and painful years, and I was under arrest when I woke up that morning
for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and failure to vacate the
premises.
I am alive and sober today only because of access to treatment that I
had, like other Members of Congress. Like my friend from Rhode Island,
we had access to treatment as well as the grace of God and the support
of many other recovering people, over the last 26 years in my case.
{time} 1530
I'm living proof, as is my friend from Rhode Island, 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 access to treatment last year for their addiction, people who
had admitted their powerlessness over chemicals, and the treatment
doors were slammed shut because the insurance companies said, No, we're
not going to cover you in treatment, despite the fact that the policy
said treatment shall be provided.
It's a national tragedy, Madam Speaker, that 150,000 of our fellow
Americans died last year as a direct result of chemical addiction.
Thirty thousand Americans committed suicide from their depression last
year alone.
And it's a national crisis that untreated addiction and mental
illness cost our country, our economy, $550 billion last year alone.
And think of the costs that can't be measured in dollars and cents.
Think of the human suffering, the broken families, the shattered
dreams, the ruined careers, the destroyed lives. The statistics are so
staggering that sometimes we forget there's a tragic human story behind
every figure, as Representative Kennedy and I heard in those 14 field
hearings we conducted throughout the Nation.
Madam Speaker, let me now share a couple of those stories.
In my home State of Minnesota, the second hearing we held, Anna
Westin, was a young woman who suffered from anorexia for several years,
and her mother, Kitty, talked about how their insurance company, the
family's insurance company, refused to cover the inpatient treatment
that Anna Westin desperately needed. Anna became distraught at being a
financial burden on her parents and committed suicide, took her own
life.
I want to thank Anna's mother, Kitty Westin. She has created the Anna
Westin Foundation to help other young people struggling with eating
disorders. And Kitty Westin has been a tireless advocate for expanding
access to treatment. But her daughter didn't need to die had the
insurance company done the right thing, the cost-effective thing, and
covered that inpatient treatment that Anna Westin needed so badly.
We also heard horror story after horror story as a result of health
plans discriminating against people with chemical addiction and mental
illness.
We heard from Steve Winter, a close personal friend of ours because
of these hearings. He traveled in his wheelchair to at least half of
those field hearings. Steve tells the most compelling story I've ever
heard. When he was a teenager, he woke up one morning and his back was
stinging. He felt a stinging sensation. He stumbled downstairs to
breakfast and he realized that blood was streaming from his back. He
put his hand back there to his back, lower back, and had a handful of
blood. Then his mother came into the kitchen, and her voice said, your
sister is in heaven, and now you and I are going to join her. His
mother was pointing a gun at him. Fortunately, Steve was able to talk
his mother into putting the gun down after she had killed his sister
and critically injured him, causing him to be a paraplegic for the rest
of his life. But as Steve said, My mother didn't shoot my sister and
me; her mental illness did. It was the family's insurance company who
is to blame for stopping the coverage of his mother's drugs for
schizophrenia. That's what caused Steve to lose the use of his legs for
the rest of his life and his sister to be shot to death.
Clearly, Madam Speaker, there are very few families in America who
haven't been touched in some way by mental illness or addiction. And I
know my colleague's going to share some of those stories, but let me
just say that it's time to end the discrimination against people
suffering the ravages of mental illness and chemical addiction. It's
time to end the higher copayments, higher deductibles, the out-of-
pocket costs and limited treatment stays. It's time to end those
discriminatory barriers that don't exist for other physical diseases.
It's time to treat mental illness and chemical addiction under the same
rules as physical illnesses. After all, it was 1946 when the American
Medical Association categorized addiction as a disease. Anybody from
the Flat Earth Society who still thinks it's a moral failing, I suggest
they consult the American Medical Association, our Nation's doctors,
who, as long ago as 1956, realized addiction is a disease.
As my colleague from Rhode Island said, the Paul Wellstone Mental
Health and Addiction Equity Act will give Americans suffering from
addiction greater access to treatment by prohibiting health insurers
from placing discriminatory restrictions on treatment. In other words,
it will end the discrimination against people in health plans
[[Page H15451]]
who need treatment for mental illness or chemical addiction, plain and
simple.
Madam Speaker, expanding access to treatment is not only the right
thing to do, it's also the cost-effective thing to do. We've got all
the empirical data in the world, all the actuarial studies in the world
to prove that equity for mental health and addiction treatment will
save billions of dollars nationally while not raising premiums more
than 2/10 of 1 percent, and that's according to an exhaustive study by
the Congressional Budget Office.
In other words, Madam Speaker, for less than the price of a cheap cup
of coffee per month, one cheap cup of coffee per month, 16 million
people in health plans could receive treatment for their chemical
addiction and millions more for mental illness.
It's also well documented that every dollar spent on treatment saves
up to $12 in health care and criminal justice costs alone. People like
Mr. Kennedy and I, who have been treated, our health care costs are 100
percent less, 100 percent less than people with an addiction or mental
illness whose disease has not been treated; 100 percent less in terms
of health care costs alone.
This landmark legislation that Representative Kennedy and I have been
working on for 10 years has 273 House sponsors, 273 of you here in the
House, cosponsors. It was passed with strong bipartisan majorities in
two subcommittees, three full committees in the House.
Let me say, Madam Speaker, the bottom line now, we must not go home
this year without enacting mental health parity into law. Let me repeat
that. We must not go home this year, Congress must not leave without
enacting mental health parity into law. Tens of millions of Americans
suffering the ravages of mental illness, chemical addiction, can't
afford to wait any longer.
Madam Speaker, before I yield back to my friend from Rhode Island,
let me just thank him, again, for his incredible leadership, for his
outstanding work, for his passion for people in need, people suffering
from mental illness and chemical addiction, and for the example he is
to millions of Americans.
I want to conclude, Madam Speaker, by saying that ending
discrimination against people suffering from addiction or mental
illness is not just another public policy issue. It's a matter of life
or death. It's a life-or-death issue for millions of Americans
suffering the ravages of mental illness and chemical addiction.
Let me conclude by repeating as strongly as I can, it's time to end
the discrimination against people who need treatment for mental illness
and/or chemical addiction. It's time to prohibit health insurers from
placing discriminatory barriers on treatment. It's time to provide
greater access to treatment. It's time to pass the Paul Wellstone
Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act, because, Madam Speaker, the
American people, literally, can't afford to wait any longer for
Congress to act. The American people should not have to wait any longer
for Congress to deal with America's number one public health problem.
Let's keep the ball moving forward. And next week, hopefully, we'll
have the best Christmas and Hanukkah present we could ever deliver to
the American people; that is, treatment
equity for those suffering from mental illness and chemical addiction.
Again, I thank my friend from Rhode Island.
Mr. KENNEDY. I thank the gentleman from Minnesota. I ask him and say
to everybody a rhetorical question. If you could imagine in this
country insurance companies saying to you, ``Cancer is going to cost
you a higher deductible or copay. We're going to charge you more for
that because we choose to,'' I can only imagine the outcry in this
country. They wouldn't allow it for a second if they charged more for
treatment for one disease than another in any other part of the body,
but they allow it for mental illness because there's a stigma in
society. Let's just face it. People are afraid of mental illness
because they think it reflects something about them, their moral
character, their ability to be strong and so forth. The fact of the
matter is mental health is about being strong.
One of the great opportunities that I had as an early Member of
Congress was to go down to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and rededicate
the Special Warfare School named in honor of my late uncle, President
John Kennedy. President Kennedy was the first to award the wearing of
the green beret in Special Forces. And I was surprised to learn that
the Special Forces have for them psychiatrists on staff 24 hours, 7
days a week for each of the units of our Special Forces.
And you'd think to yourself, why in the world would the strongest,
most elite, most resilient of all of our military men and women, why
would they ever need to see a psychiatrist? And the commanders told me
it's not because of any weakness that we want them to have a mental
health professional; it's, rather, we want them to be the best that
they can be. And we know, we've sunk hundreds of thousands of dollars
into the training of these elite Special Forces. We've trained them to
jump out of the sky. We've trained them to dive under the water and
carry all kinds of things. We've trained them to do the most
extraordinary tasks, and we've trained them to shoot at incredible
ranges and to do incredible tasks. And we know that for them to be able
to do those tasks at the maximum proficiency, they have to have a clear
mind. They have to be unburdened by any stress in their life for them
to have the maximum use of all their faculties and doing the job that
this government asks them to do when they're tasked to go and defend
the United States of America.
And I was astounded. I said to myself, Well, if we want the best for
all of our Special Forces and are tasking mental health professionals
so that we get the best from our Special Forces, why aren't we tasking
this for the rest of our military? And, in fact, as we're finding out
now, the military is slowly learning that, in fact, we should be doing
that for the rest of our military. It actually makes sense, in order to
save lives amongst our own military members, to train them in advance
to them going to war, in advance of them going to defend our country,
to prepare themselves not only physically, but to prepare them mentally
for the challenges that lay ahead. Why? Why? Because, when they get
back from that combat theater, we've all read about posttraumatic
stress disorder. I prefer to call that combat stress illness because I
don't see it as a disorder. Frankly, I see it as a normal reaction to
abnormal situations. That's what war is. Soldiers are responding to
stress that is absolutely abnormal. People killing people in the
streets, bombs going off is abnormal. Soldiers responding to that is
normal. So the stress that is known as posttraumatic stress is
absolutely a normal response to war. It should be called combat stress
illness. That means they can get over it with the proper treatment,
and, frankly, we ought to be doing more to treat our soldiers and their
families. But, frankly, we, as a country, have seen such a stigma
towards mental health that we're losing our soldiers now to suicide at
a record rate.
{time} 1545
We have got 120 soldiers killing themselves every week back here in
the United States after they've survived going over to Iraq. I only
wish we added all those soldiers' names to the list of casualties in
this the Iraq war, because if we added them to the names of those
killed in action, this President's body count for the war in Iraq would
be a lot higher than it is right now.
And the fact of the matter is we are missing the opportunity right
now to intervene and take care of many of those soldiers because of our
stubborn attitude towards mental health; and if we don't get it right
with our soldiers and our veterans, we're not going to get it right for
the rest of the American public.
Our American public is sympathetic to our soldiers because they've
stood the line and defended our country, and if we can't understand why
they don't need it, then how are we going to understand why a child in
the inner city who is going to school in southwest Washington, who's
seeing guns and bullets fly through their neighborhood and seeing
police cars at night all around their neighborhood, because of gunshots
echoing in the night, how are we
[[Page H15452]]
going to understand where that child isn't going to have post-traumatic
stress? If a soldier's going to suffer from post-traumatic stress
because of guns, bullets and bombs, how are we not going to expect a
child growing up in our inner cities around our country not to have
stress and not have the impact of that?
We need mental health for our soldiers. We need it for our children
in this country who are growing up in traumatic situations.
Mr. RAMSTAD. Would the gentleman yield?
Mr. KENNEDY. Absolutely.
Mr. RAMSTAD. I again appreciate the gentleman's comments.
One of those troops lived not far from me in a neighboring community
in Minnesota. Lance Corporal Jonathan Schultze, a brave, proud marine
who had returned from combat in Iraq, went to the VA suffering from
PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, as well as alcoholism. He was
told that there were no beds available at the VA, and he would be
number 26 on the waiting list, that he will get a call in weeks,
probably several months.
Well, 4 days later, Marine Lcpl Jonathan Schultze was found in his
apartment hanging, hanging from an electrical cord. Just one victim,
one brave marine who didn't have to die after sacrificing so much for
his country in Iraq, one brave veteran who didn't receive the mental
health treatment he needed and deserved.
And I thank my friend from Rhode Island and others who supported the
Veterans Health Care Act. Hopefully, that legislation that we passed
and was signed by the President earlier this year will help address
that problem.
I also appreciate the gentleman from Rhode Island pointing out that
the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Treatment Equity Act only addresses
one aspect of the problem here, people who are being discriminated
against in health plans. We also need to make sure our troops are
getting the adequate mental health care that they need and deserve; our
veterans, across the board, from all wars, are getting the treatment
that they need and deserve; our Medicare seniors, you look at the rates
as people are aging with our aging population, so is the incidence
among people over 65, the incidence of alcoholism and drug addiction.
We need to address the Medicare population as well.
The Medicaid population, there are roughly 26 million addicts and
alcoholics in this country according to SAMPHSA, the Substance Abuse
and Mental Health Administration. About 16 million of the 26 million
alcoholics and addicts are in health plans, which means that at least
10 million are either in Medicaid or have no insurance whatsoever.
We've got to address that population as well.
And, finally, as the gentleman from Rhode Island knows well, 82
percent of the people in prisons and jails in the United States are
there directly or indirectly because of mental illness and/or
addiction, and we're not treating, in our prisons and jails, we're not
treating these problems, the underlying cause. And 99 percent of
prisoners are going to get out some day, about one percent being
capital offenders who presumably will be executed or will be staying
there for the rest of their life without parole.
Mr. KENNEDY. And in fact, within 3 years in the State prisons, those
prisoners have a recidivism rate of 70 percent. So those State
prisoners will be back in the criminal justice system. Seventy percent
of them will be revolving back within the criminal justice within 3
years, the reason being we don't have alternatives. We don't deal with
the basic problem.
We need to have drug courts and drug treatment; and if we do that, we
establish a way for these prisoners who are spending 35 grand, 40 grand
a year to keep these people housed in prison and, yet, we're not. We're
releasing them to what? They don't have the skills. They don't have the
treatment. Whether they do, when they get out, they're going to go out
and use again. If they have to use, they have to break in and enter.
They're committing more crimes.
It doesn't solve the problem. It may make lawmakers feel good to beat
their chest and say, oh, I sent that criminal to jail, but it is not
making our constituents any safer, and it's not solving the problem.
And the war on drugs is a joke if it doesn't address the demand side of
the war on drugs.
Mr. RAMSTAD. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.
Mr. RAMSTAD. Ironically, when President Nixon declared the war on
drugs, he directed 70 percent of the funding to treatment, prevention
and education, 30 percent to the supply side. In other words, 70
percent to demand side, to reduce the demand for drugs, and 30 percent
for law enforcement, proper adjudication and interdiction efforts.
Well, today those funding priorities have been reversed, and we simply
aren't spending our resources wisely. We are not doing enough on the
demand side of the equation.
That's why over the last decade and a half the treatment beds in
America have disappeared. They're gone. Insurance companies aren't
reimbursing. That's why, even more alarming, 60 percent of the
adolescent treatment beds have disappeared over the last decade. We
need to reverse those priorities.
I remember visiting with President Clinton and several other Members
of Congress and Mexican President, President Salinas, former President
Salinas, and he said, until you Americans curb your insatiable demand
for drugs, we're never going to be able to address the supply-side
problem, the flow of drugs from Central and South America through
Mexico into the United States.
So the gentleman from Rhode Island is absolutely correct: we need to
address the demand side. We need to spend more of our resources on
treatment, education, and prevention.
Mr. KENNEDY. And, frankly, what the Paul Wellstone Mental Health
Parity Act says is that we need to offer insurance because really what
private insurance companies are doing is putting this on the public
taxpayer because, for example, we heard a story out in Los Angeles
about a single mom who was trying to get treatment for her son with a
methamphetamine addiction, and the insurance company told her that the
in-patient treatment that her doctor told her her son needed was not
medically necessary so she couldn't get it for her son. What happened
to her son? Her son broke into a house to burglarize it to get the
money for the drugs. He got caught up in the criminal justice system.
Wouldn't you know, 2 years in jail, at the taxpayers' expense. Imagine
what that could have bought in terms of treatment, all of which should
have been covered by her insurance policy, which she paid for.
Now, the fact is, when you buy insurance, you should think health
insurance, your body. I mean, where does it say health care only starts
from your neck down? I don't know. I just can't understand where, when
they say you're buying health insurance but your health only starts
from your neck down. This is absolutely incredible in the year 2007
that we've got such patent discrimination in our country's laws, and
we're still abiding by them, and that it is taking Congress this long
to even consider legislation to end this patent discrimination.
So we need the people in this country to call their Representatives,
to call their Senators and tell them that we need passage of the Paul
Wellstone Mental Health Parity bill, and let me just read another story
about what happened about this medical necessity.
We had a woman whose daughter Katie was trying to get help for her
heroin addiction. She had insurance. Her insurance company said that
they couldn't treat her with in-patient treatment until she had OD'd,
overdosed, at least once. So imagine this: they said, we can provide
her with outpatient treatment, but of course, the outpatient treatment
that they provided her was a great deal of distance from where she
lived, so it made it very difficult for them to get to. I'm sure that
was no coincidence by the insurance plan to make it difficult for them
to get to.
What happened? Well, sure enough, Katie OD'd, but unfortunately, you
can never tell whether you're going to survive an OD. Katie never
survived her first OD to prove that she was an addict so that she could
qualify for medical necessity by her insurance plan so that she could
get health care insurance for her drug addiction. That is how crazy our
health insurance system is when it comes to mental health. If
[[Page H15453]]
she had cancer and malignancy or a tumor in her, she would have been
given that care, would have been given that care. But because this is a
mental illness, she's been denied that care.
And we are looking to pass this legislation because we believe it's
fundamentally wrong that this is not covered, and it should not be
denied care. We know, once again, that the brain is part of the body.
We can measure the metabolic changes in the brain now due to modern
technology. If people and insurance companies are questioning the
science based on determining any of this, all they need to do is go to
the National Institutes of Health, National Institutes on Drug
Addiction, National Institutes on Alcoholism, or National Institute of
Mental Health. They can get all the information they want.
There is no sound basis for discrimination. It's patently wrong. It's
based in fear and it's based in essential misinformation. And so we are
constantly trying to pass this in spite of the efforts by insurance
companies to fight us, and we need the American public to join us in
this battle. Otherwise, we'll continue to see these tragedies reoccur
over and over and over again in this country.
Mr. RAMSTAD. Will the gentleman yield?
Mr. KENNEDY. Yes.
Mr. RAMSTAD. I'd just like to conclude my portion, Mr. Speaker, by
quoting from one of our key advisers on this legislation, somebody
who's a true expert, Navy Captain Medical Dr. Ron Smith, who is former
chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the Bethesda Naval Medical
Center and who's worked in chemical dependency in the field of
treatment for dozens of years.
And Dr. Smith, when he testified at a hearing several years ago, said
every time you treat a person for addiction or mental illness, you're
really helping seven people: their siblings, spouse, significant
others, children, grandparents, uncles, aunts and others close to the
addicted or mentally ill person. Why? Because these are family diseases
that affect the entire family. And Dr. Smith went on to say at that
hearing that the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Treatment
Equity Act has the potential to favorably impact more American people
than any other law passed by Congress since Social Security and
Medicare; that this bill, to provide treatment, to provide equity in
treatment for mental health and addiction has the potential to help
more American people than any law passed by Congress since Social
Security and Medicare.
Mr. Speaker, we can't afford not to pass this bill next week, the
final week of this year of Congress. This is a historic opportunity for
the Congress; and I know, I know in my heart that the President will
sign the bill if it gets to his desk.
{time} 1600
Again, I urge all Americans who have an interest in this life-or-
death issue to e-mail, call your Congress Member, your Senators in the
next several days, urge them to pass the Paul Wellstone Mental Health
Parity Act. It is absolutely essential that we get it done now.
I thank the gentleman from Rhode Island for yielding.
Mr. KENNEDY. Thank you.
I wanted just to conclude with a couple of stories that I think are
uplifting, and they show when people are successful in getting
treatment that their lives really do turn around.
Marley Prunty-Lara spoke to us in one of our hearings. She was
diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She was first diagnosed when she was
15 years old. And she and her mom were searching for a psychiatrist in
her home State of South Dakota, and they were told that she would have
to wait 4 to 5 months for an initial appointment. As Marley was stating
in her testimony, she did not have that long to live.
Thankfully, she found care 350 miles away, in another State, and was
hospitalized for 2 months. However, the residential treatment facility
was not covered by her mother's insurance, forcing her parents to take
out a second mortgage on their home in order for them to receive the
care that their daughter needed for her to survive.
Marley stated that if she had suffered a spinal cord injury requiring
long-term hospitalization, the insurance company would have paid for
all of her care without any questions asked, but because her
hospitalization involved a mental illness, it was deemed unworthy of
insurance. Finally, Marley said, ``I understand the power of successful
treatment because I am living it today. I have passionately lived with
the prison of mental illness and I have also experienced the
incalculable emancipation that accompanies wellness.''
How can Congress continue to deny the opportunity to be well and live
a full life to tens of millions of Americans every year?
We met with Amy Smith from Denver, Colorado, who also talked about
her unmet mental health needs, how it cost her 40 years of her life,
shuffling the roads in Denver, Colorado; muttering to herself; people
dismissing her on the sidewalk, not talking to her; panhandling, using
drugs; in and out of prison; in and out of detox; always being
marginalized from society until one day she finally got the help she
needed.
Her life is 180 degrees different today. She has a job. She has a
house. She's paying taxes. But she said to us, Members of Congress, I
lost those 40 years of my life. You can't give those years back to me.
I wish I had gotten the treatment earlier in my life, but I didn't. I
only hope that more Americans get the help they need earlier in their
lives rather than waste their lives the way I did. But I didn't get
that help.
We need to make sure that people live out their dreams. Amy Smith
said that she had had the dream of getting married and having children.
She said, I'm too old for that now. I can't have children now. I'm too
old for that. She said, Maybe some day I might still get married, maybe
I will adopt. But she said, I had all kinds of dreams of having a
really successful career and really making the most of my life. She
said, I feel like I've squandered so much of my abilities and talents.
And it was so clear to us that she had so much to offer, and those
skills and talents were not realized because of her mental illness. And
the fact is we have millions of Americans who have so much to offer in
our society, and yet they and their potential is being squandered.
Squandered why? Because we as a society failed to open up the door of
opportunity to them simply because we reject their illness from being
treated like every other illness.
And I think that's un-American. That's not what this country is all
about. That's not what we as a nation are all about. And that's why we
need to pass the Paul Wellstone Mental Health Parity Act.
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