Enactment of the Mental Health Insurance Parity Act makes Maryland the first state to require insurers to make available mental illness benefits "under the same terms and conditions [as those] provided for any other type of health care."
This "landmark legislation" (the Washington Post) was passed without significant news coverage (none in The Sun) and without public debate.
Sen. Howard A. Denis, R-Montgomery, a long-time supporter of legislatively imposed parity coverage for mental illness, "Mental illness should be viewed as it is: a form of illness. It should be treated in insurance policies the same as other types of illnesses."
This is the oldest myth of the mental health field: "Mental illness is just like any other illness."
Also a myth is the current claim that expansive (and expensive) ** insurance coverage of mental illness has wide public support.
Even with proposed changes, the new law will cost Marylanders millions, but more damaging, it will purport to resolve by legislative fiat a raging scientific dispute over whether the hundreds of so-called "psychiatric disorders" as well as the abuse of drugs are in reality "just like other illnesses."
The Maryland law has been under attack in the courts, but it appears now that a compromise has been reached among all interested parties that will avoid the court challenge.
The compromise, reached this month by legislators, insurers, organizations of health workers and the Mental Health Association of Maryland, would drop a provision in the law that would have allowed policyholders to waive mental health coverage. It provides coverage parity for inpatient treatment beginning July 1, 1995, and eventually expands outpatient coverage, but with co-payments.
Both the original statute and the compromise represent a major step toward bringing about what psychiatrist Thomas Szasz has termed the "Therapeutic State," one that medicalizes all problems in living. This comes despite a general movement across the country in commercial and private insurance to restrict mental health coverage. Further, it represents the first test of the concept of "parity" for mental illness, a clear goal of the Clinton National Health Care Plan.
Mental health professionals use the same term, "mental illness," to refer to all categories of mental illness, whether or not there is a scientifically established link to a biological condition. Thus, while less than 5 percent of the American people have mental illnesses that even psychiatrists claim are proven medical conditions, the term "mental illness" is regularly applied to a population large enough to justify the word "pandemic."
