[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 4762]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




         THE MEDICAL EVALUATION PARITY FOR SERVICE MEMBERS ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. THOMPSON of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, despite the recent 
military drawdown, our Nation continues to rely upon qualified and 
well-trained volunteers joining the military in order to regenerate our 
Armed Forces. Now, some of these young men and women have prepared 
their entire lives for service, while others found the call to duty 
some years later. All have chosen to serve their country in uniform and 
do so with honor and bravery.
  When joining the service, new recruits must undergo comprehensive 
medical and physical examinations in order to certify they are both 
fully fit and capable of performing the range of rigorous and demanding 
jobs our military must carry out. However, Mr. Speaker, despite 
comprehensive physical and medical evaluations, there is no similar 
examination for mental health competency; meaning, we thoroughly 
examine knees, backs, eyes, and even the heart, yet leave the most 
important part of the body--one's mind--off-limits.
  Now, this is certainly cause for concern and what some view as a 
serious gap in recruitment evaluation, especially as the military 
continues to address issues of behavioral health, posttraumatic stress 
disease, traumatic brain injury, and suicide. According to a recent 
Army study, nearly one in five Army soldiers enter the service with a 
psychiatric disorder, and nearly half of all soldiers who tried suicide 
first attempted it before enlisting. Additionally, the Journal of the 
American Medical Association found that a large percentage of suicides 
in the military were individuals who had never been deployed in a 
combat role.
  Mr. Speaker, as policymakers, we have a responsibility to address 
this challenge. And this week, Ohio Congressman Tim Ryan and I plan to 
call on our colleagues to do just that and to join as cosponsors of the 
Medical Evaluation Parity for Service Members, or MEPS, Act. This 
bipartisan bill will institute a preliminary mental health assessment 
at the time recruits are first joining the military.
  Keeping individual privacy in mind, the MEPS Act will follow all 
HIPAA guidelines and cannot be used in consideration for promotion or 
assignments. Additionally, the Congressional Budget Office has found 
the MEPS Act to have no budgetary effect.
  In addition, this legislation requires the National Institute of 
Mental Health, in conjunction with the Department of Veterans Affairs 
and other experts, to report their recommendations on the assessment to 
ensure best practices are done. Now, this commonsense proposal seeks to 
bring mental health to parity with physical health and recruitment 
evaluations and will ensure that our incoming troops are both 
physically and mentally fit to serve.
  Additionally, the bill has the support of the American Psychological 
Association, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the National Guard 
Association of the United States, the Reserve Officers Association, the 
Reserve Enlisted Association, and the Association of the U.S. Navy.
  Mr. Speaker, the MEPS Act is not, alone, the magic silver bullet to 
solve all of the behavioral health issues the military faces, but it is 
an important step in better understanding the scope of the challenge 
that we face. Now, I encourage my fellow colleagues to join us in this 
effort to protect the safety and security of those in uniform by 
becoming a cosponsor of the Medical Evaluation Parity for Service 
Members Act. These brave men and women deserve as much.

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