Joseph P. Kennedy III

If I had a magic wand, I would fully fund the Nurse-Family Partnership in this country.

And so, Doctor, if a health plan is not compliant in providing parity coverage for mental and behavioral health services, do you think that should be public knowledge?

benzodiazepine scripts have gone up over 30 percent since COVID hit--30 percent.

Bills of this are already in place. As you know, for oncologists, particularly pediatric oncologists and others, they have these support systems.

there is no education without mental health, just like we say there is no health without mental health

addiction is addiction is addiction. It could be opioids today, but it could be benzodiazepines tomorrow.

We are still reeling from the opioid crisis, which we never quite got our arms around. And I am just thinking that we are adding fuel to the fire here and that we should be very mindful of the fact that this is going to get, as we are…

I believe that because of the wide number of plans and the fact that these plans have not yet come close to earning our trust or their patients' trust, we not only need to have random, robust, and immediate audits, but also public…

Almost 12 years later, though, there are still insurers that are not compliant with the Federal law, right?

You would automatically reduce the number of people in jail, in prison in our country overnight.

I can't help but think a huge uptick in the prescribing of benzodiazepines, coupled with huge increases in alcohol consumption, and then, of course, coupled with the new commercialization of marijuana, that we don't have a kind of major…

To think that we are losing just as much, if not more, to these illnesses and we are not hearing about it at all.

Isolation is not good for your mental health. It is a coping mechanism for people who do have addiction and mental illness.

Our mental healthcare system is broken. Our addiction treatment system is broken.

I think if Congress responds by actually saying you are not allowed to sell your health insurance product anywhere else in our market if you don't adhere to our laws.

So one of the things that the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Treatment Act, along with subsequent parity laws, did was to ensure that plans provide information on how they are making mental and behavioral health parity decisions.

We need substantive systemic reform. We need legal mental health parity, like what my cousin Patrick has envisioned.

What your bill is calling for is the ability for that to be transparent, to get out, so that State legislatures can start to enact similar laws like that to help provide some accountability.

Twelve years later, time flies. There you go.

Just days ago, President Trump stood up before the American public and told us that he asked his administration to slow the tests down...

I appreciate that. Doctor, we are talking about collecting it on August 1st for a virus that arrived on our shores in January and February.

Given that 45 million people have lost their jobs, and the administration still continues to move forward in trying to implement work requirements, will the implementation of work requirements be helpful at stopping the spread of…

This administration has failed so completely to prepare our nation for this pandemic...

But to my people in Massachusetts and our people in Chelsea--maybe they are predominantly Black and brown, men, women, and children--this administration's failure to test was no joke.

We know that Black and brown people across this country are more than twice as likely to die as those who are white from this virus...