California Introduces Two New Mental Health Bills

The news is crazy. I was going to say "the news is crazy lately" but truly the news is always crazy.

So how about some good news?

On Tuesday January 14, 2020, California lawmakers introduced two bills designed to place additional requirements on health insurance companies to adequately cover mental health and addiction issues. The bills were introduced just days after Gov. Gavin Newsom promised stronger enforcement on the issue.

Senate Bill 855 by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, requires insurance companies to fund all mental health and addiction treatment that has been deemed medically necessary by a doctor. Senate Bill 854 by Sen. Jim Beall, D-San Jose, prevents insurance companies from requiring patients to seek prior authorization or start with less effective treatments before being prescribed medication-assisted treatment for addiction.

Federal law already requires insurance companies to provide the same coverage for mental illness as they do for physical illness. That is what's commonly known as mental health parity. California law also has it's own parity requirements.

But of course, insurance companies are fighting back by arguing that they already follow the existing mental health parity laws. Spokeswoman for the California Association of Health Plans, Mary Ellen Grant, announced Tuesday that health insurance companies are strongly opposing the bills.

She said,

"We think that they are less about mental health parity and more about creating new mandates and lawsuits."

Grant continued by claiming that mental health care is a "really high" priority for all health plans.

Barf.

At his recent budget announcement, Gov. Newsom said his Department of Managed Health Care will "aggressively" ramp up enforcement of the existing mental health parity laws. He believes that some insurance companies currently aren't following the laws.

Sen. Beall said that enforcement after a health plan has violated the law by preventing or delaying someone from access to treatment just isn't enough.

"That's too little too late, it's good to have parity enforcement, but we need to have a stiffer, tougher approach on insurance like our two bills do, which is to deal with it up front."

Hopefully other states will follow California's lead and work to put an end to the unfair practices that are carried out by insurance companies. Everyone deserves easy access to affordable care for mental health and addiction issues. It's ridiculous that insurance companies discriminate so blatantly against those who need this care the most. I recently was required to get a prior authorization on a medication that I have already been taking, and was already being covered by my insurance. Without this prior-auth, they would have stopped covering my medication. It was an extra step and hoop to jump through that shouldn't have been there. And it will only last for a year. So next year I will have to do the same thing all over again just too keep taking the medication that I badly need.

It's unbelievable. Insurance companies are adding fuel to the stigma fire and it needs to stop. Cheers to California for taking steps forward to help end this bias.