Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I think the kindest thing I can say about this amendment is it should not be necessary. Just a brief review of the history of mental health parity as it relates to our healthcare system, of course, those of us who were here in Congress the day after the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy was declared in September 2008 will recall that Patrick Kennedy's bill dealing with mental health parity was used as the vehicle to provide the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which followed in the wake of the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy. So mental health parity was actually written into law in 2008, signed by George W. Bush. That was 2 years prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act. So the Affordable Care Act comes along. The essential health benefits were eventually disclosed in the Affordable Care Act in November 2012, about a week after election day, if I recall correctly. The mental health parity rules were not written by the Department of Health and Human Services until probably 2 years after that, but they were written under Secretary Sebelius. As a consequence, those have been the rules of the road ever since. I guess what I don't quite understand is why the navigator system constructed under the Affordable Care Act was not constructed in a way that would have allowed this information to be part of the package of information that is disclosed by the navigators.…”