Pete Domenici: “I believe we have had debate on this. I just want to, one more time, suggest that what is missing from the Senator from…”

“I believe we have had debate on this. I just want to, one more time, suggest that what is missing from the Senator from Texas' discussion is--I would put it this way--there was total misunderstanding as I listened to him talk about severe mental illness and the marketplace and the neighborhoods of America. Because that illness has been so stigmatized for so long, it has even stigmatized the insurance policies of this land. We started out 30 or 40 years ago recognizing that we came out of the Dark Ages with reference to severe mental illness and crazies and loonies, and we started understanding that people really were sick. Yet, we dragged everybody kicking and screaming to understand that a mother or a father with a child with schizophrenia had nothing whatsoever to do by way of treatment or care with that child getting sick. Pretty soon we got to recognize that even that famous old Dr. Freud was wacko because you could not talk people out of mental illness. You can have them on the sofa and chair and talk until you are blue in the face, and if you are a schizophrenic, you are sick. What happened is, society just resisted that. And I guess part of it is that every now and then somebody who is mentally sick kills someone and there we are again talking about 'those people.' But let me tell you, there are millions of Americans who have members of their family with one of these dread illnesses.”