By HILARY GOWINS - shawmedia.com
Local mental health officials are hoping that new legislation signed by Gov. Pat Quinn will be a true victory for the community – though some have their doubts.
Quinn signed House Bill 1530 at the Alexian Brothers Center for Mental Health in Hoffman Estates last week. The bill prevents insurers from including additional barriers within a policy – such as financial requirements, treatment limitations, lifetime limits or annual limits – to treatments for mental, emotional, nervous and substance abuse disorders if no such stipulations exist for other health conditions, according a release from the governor’s office.
Sandy Lewis, executive director of the McHenry County Mental Health Board, said this is an important step for mental health care.
“For too long, individuals and families have not had the opportunity to get the help that they needed when they’re insured by group health insurance because mental health and substance abuse weren’t covered the same way.”
Lewis said this also is a symbolic victory that elevates mental disorders to an equal playing field with physical ailments.
“The example that I love to use is, how would we feel if we had a chronic heart disease but were limited to coverage for only one hospital incident a year?” she said. “That’s the typical kind of coverage these issues had in previous plans prior to this. It really recognizes mental health and substance abuse as a disease, which it is. This provides the coverage to treat it as such.”
Dan Blair, a licensed clinical professional counselor and founder of Blair Counseling in Crystal Lake, also believes that this legislation could be a victory for mental health care – if some key criteria are met.
“If it improves access to mental health care, premiums do not increase, and employers do not drop coverage, I think it is a victory,” Blair said. “I am not expecting premiums will substantially increase or employers will substantially drop coverage any more than they already have.”
But some said the only people HB 1530 helps are those already insured. This legislation comes just months after Quinn slashed funding for state human service agencies that provide care to low-income residents and the uninsured.
“I think there’s a clear hypocrisy there, that the state is not providing the services they should but they are asking providers to now,” said Dr. Chandragupta Vedak, a psychiatrist with Horizons Behavioral Health on staff with Centegra Health System.
According to the Kaiser Foundation, 15 percent of Illinois residents are uninsured. Dr. Vedak said that between 40 percent and 50 percent of the patients he sees in-patient are unfunded and 10 percent to 15 percent of out-patient visitors are unfunded.
“The same people that were behind before are still behind,” said Dr. Sheila Senn, director of behavioral health at Centegra Health System. “This does nothing to quell their needs or the support for services in the community that have been cut. It doesn’t bolster those safety nets we have in the system.”
Senn added that this legislation does little for those with the greatest needs.
“Unfortunately in our community we saw the suicide rate double in the past couple of years,” she said. “We’re seeing people access services in a much more acute situation, whereas if they accessed them earlier, they would get help at a point when they’re less ill.”
For now, however, some in the mental health community are willing to accept these recent steps as a victory for the patients they serve.
“While I deplore the cuts that have been made and certainly the lack of payments from the state, I at least look at this as some sort of victory,” said Suzanne Hoban, executive director of Family Health Partnership Clinic in Woodstock.
