September 25, 2008
Congress Nears Finish Line on Mental Health Parity
Congratulations to those of you who have long advocated passage of mental health and addiction services parity legislation. Last night the Senate and House passed different versions of parity legislation by strong vote margins. The Senate voted 83 to 12 to add parity language (the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici MH Parity & Addiction Equity Act of 2008) to a much larger tax and disaster relief bill (HR 6049). The House put the parity language in a new bill (HR6983) and voted 376 to 47 to pass the bill. While the parity language was identical in both instances, the funding source (pay-for) was different. When passed, the legislation will provide mental health and addiction services parity for about 113 million Americans who work for employers with 50 employees or more.
This is an unusual legislative situation because the House and Senate parity bills are attached to very different legislative bills, which require more floor votes within days in order to become law before the end of this Congress. We are waiting now to learn the strategy of congressional leaders for final consideration of the parity language. You may be called upon for further advocacy action when a final vote is scheduled.
Background
Senate and House leaders have struggled to bring the parity measure to the floor because congressional rules require a "pay-for" to offset the impact of implementing parity on federal revenues (estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost $3.8 billion over 10 years). Congressional budget rules require legislation with a fiscal impact to include either increases in revenues or decreases in spending to remain budget neutral. The Senate bill is attached to a large tax and disaster relief package with offsets to cover parity costs. Because not all revenue losses in the Senate tax bill are offset, the bill assumes the “pay-for” rules would be waived. This waiver creates strong resistance to the tax bill among House Democrats who do not wish to put aside the “pay-for” rules. Thus House leaders passed an identical parity bill except for the financing provisions. For background on the legislation see: NASW S.558 summary and our recent Senate action alert.
We greatly appreciate social workers’ continued commitment to support passage of this landmark legislation. In the waning days of this Congress, we expect to make a few more requests for membership action on critical items in social work’s legislative agenda.
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