Patrick J. Kennedy

And until there is that same urgency towards enforcing, and until there is that same money backing up our words that these are really equal illnesses, we are really still in denial as a Nation.

Well, it is obviously the key driver in terms of ability to provide the services necessary, because while there is a suspension now and people are using it, that is not going to continue unless the biggest payer of all, CMS, steps up and…

So if I were both a liberal or a conservative, parity would be a big issue for me.

the promise of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act has not been realized and that many Americans are encountering barriers when seeking professional help.

the bottom line is, when I go into the ER, if I am going in with COVID or something else and they don't understand about my underlying psychiatric issues, or in the case of addiction they do not know that I am someone who suffered from the…

And really, in essence, this is corporate welfare of the first order. We are allowing the richest companies in our country, the healthcare insurance companies, who, by the way, are sitting on a boatload of cash because they have never had…

I think, obviously, when you look at the fact that so many of our jails are filled with people with mental illnesses and addictions, that clearly a better response than occupying police time would be to make sure that proper first…

the largest mental health treatment facility in all of our districts is our county jail.

there are hundreds of thousands of my fellows in America who are dying because their medical system does not know they have an underlying addiction because it doesn't show in the EMR that they have been treated for addiction.

We can't even get $20 million to even--and by the way, for my Republican friends, enforcing parity means making sure that insurance companies don't give the Heisman to mental health and addiction such that our taxpayers have to pay the…

I appreciate this is a bipartisan process, especially on mental health, which affects every family.

when mental health gets 0.04 percent of the CARES Act funding, it says a lot about where mental health is in this country.