No More Excuses
One big reason depression goes untreated is that people can't afford to seek help. Cost-conscious insurers often don't cover mental-health care at all. Or they limit the number of visits, or charge higher deductibles and copayments for talk therapy than for a blown knee or diabetes consult, say. But advocates for equal coverage got good news last week: A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that equalizing benefits increased insurers' costs by less than half a percentage point. That would amount to a mere 50 cents on a $100-a-month premium, for example, if insurers passed the cost along to consumers--and most wouldn't bother, predicts Howard Goldman, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and an author of the study.
The research, proposed by Bill Clinton when he was president, looked at seven federal health plans after equal benefits for all kinds of healthcare were put in place in 2001. Compared with more typical plans, costs crept up by close to the same amount each year--and there was no wild stampede to get services, either. Managed-care policies, researchers say, seem to keep demand and costs in check.
The findings could spur Congress to act. A bill introduced by Minnesota Rep. Jim Ramstad and Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy that would require equal benefits has bipartisan support and 224 cosponsors. It could come to a vote by year's end.
This story appears in the April 10, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.