So, I finally received a reply to my concerns that I sent to the FRC last week. Little of it involved any clarification to my concerns. Basically, they sent four “points.” The first basically said this would bring us closer to “government controlled health care” (ie socialized medicine). Secondly, this would “bring up the price of health care.” This may be vailid, but a stronger argument could be made that covering mental health conditions would be cheaper in the long run. A very significant portion of our “welfare state” are in that state due to mental health. Also, a lot of our current high cost medical conditions are “psychosomatic” in nature. In other words, it’s a lot cheaper to treat stress than it is to treat a heart attack.
The third point is that “consumers should not be forced to purchase something they do not need.” I’m not sure what they exactly mean by this, but I’m assuming that it means that those of us without a mental illness should not have to buy insurance for it. But, that’s what insurance is. You don’t buy car insurance after you have a wreck, you don’t buy fire insurance after the fire. You buy insurance hoping that you do not need it.
And then, there is the fourth point: lack of a conscience clause. I’ve covered this in detail in my previous post on this matter, and won’t rehash it here. But, they added a new wrinkle to it:
H.R. 1424 lacks a conscience clause, there appears to be no protection for an employer to reject healthcare coverage for an abortion procedure if they choose to extend mental health coverage to its employees.
What? I’m not a medical professional, but I have enough psychology training and counseling classes to know that psychiatrists, psychologists, counselors, and social workers do NOT perform abortions. More to the point, legislation requiring health insurance to cover mental health would not require health insurance to cover abortions. That would be the same as saying that requiring insurance to cover heart disease would require it to cover abortions. The FRC’s stance makes no sense whatsoever.
I think the greatest irony, however, is that in disputing the DSM-IV as the guideline in determining what conditions are to be covered, they are actually advocating government control over mental health care. If you use the DSM-IV, you are having the mental health professionals determine what is and isn’t mental illness. Under the FRC’s criteria, they would have politicians pick and choose what would be coverable.
And nobody wants that.
Filed under: ministry, politics | Tagged: abortion, Family Research Council, health care, mental health parity, politics, Tony Perkins
On a side note, another issue with this proposal is that if an employer is forced to add benefit coverage for mental health issues, the total cost to insure their workforce will rise in most cases substantially. Most companies, particulary in the US are not in a position to increase their cost structure in todays globally competitive economy. Meaning that what will happen is the company will reduce the employees other benefit items to cover the increase caused by forced mental health coverage. This will cause higher out of pocket expenditures for the more frequent and normal health care expenses that are usually covered under and employer sponsored insurance package. The government has no place in dictating the benefit structure that an employer VOLUNTARILY provides to its employers.
Justin,
I disagree, but at least your argument has many valid points and is logical. I would even agree that is the “downside” to the bill. And, if that were the argument the FRC was making against it, I would not have dedicated nearly 2000 words on this blog toward their alert and reply. Rather, the FRC has used a lot of illogical arguments to invoke fear and rally their supporters against this bill. I’m not sure if you read the alert that they posted on their website (the link no longer works), but the main crux of their argument against the bill is over a conscience clause. In the initial alert, they were opposed to treating things that they found immoral, citing things such as pedophilia and necrophilia, which is silly since if you are against pedophilia then you would want it treated. So, when I called them on it, they then went ahead and tried to tell me that this would cause employers to have to pay for abortions.
While you and I can see the stupidity of such arguments, some people buy into it. On Saturday, I attended the county Republican convention. This issue came up when we were voting on planks, and some lady got up and pretty much FRC’s position verbatim. And this kind of fear mongering is happening on both sides, and it’s killing our political system.
I disagree with you for two reasons. First, I think that overall, improving mental health will eventually drive health care costs down, and I think it would make employees more productive, which is another benefit for the employer. But, more importantly, I think that this dichotomy between “mental” and “medical” is fabricated. To me, it is the same thing as saying the cardiac health is separate from other medical health. Now, you may still think that the government should not mandate it’s coverage, and I think you can make a valid argument, but you would still find it odd that someone was making such a distinction.