[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 25]
[House]
[Pages 34147-34152]
[From the U.S. 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

[[Page 34148]]

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 
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

[[Page 34149]]

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 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

[[Page 34150]]

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 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

[[Page 34151]]

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 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.

[[Page 34152]]


  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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