Alan Simpson: “let me just say I am deeply troubled the conferees for the health insurance bill have apparently decided to not include…”

“let me just say I am deeply troubled the conferees for the health insurance bill have apparently decided to not include any form of mental health parity on the final bill. In April, 68 Senators voted aye on an amendment by Senators Domenici and Wellstone that would prohibit health plans from discriminating against people who have mental illness. This amendment was not a sense-of-the-Senate proposal or some meaningless resolution. We do plenty of those in this place. They always come back to haunt us, but we do them all the time--sense-of-the-Senate this, sense-of-the-Senate that. That is not what this was. It was a real piece of legislation. It was real legislation that expressly prohibited health plans from imposing treatment limits and financial requirements on services for mental illness that are not also imposed with respect to physical ailments. It was deeply gratifying to me personally to see so many Senators cast a rollcall vote, clearly ``on the record,'' in bipartisan support of ending this terribly unfair discrimination. It is discrimination, that is what it is. We talk about that all day in here. If there is ever a more blatant form of discrimination, I do not know what it is. To think we still carry such a stigma in society of mental illness is dark ages stuff.…”