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The proposed Senate bill rolls back Medicaid expansion, caps federal funding for the Medicaid program, and removes protections for people with pre-existing health conditions.
“Eliminating requirements for coverage of key benefits, including mental health and substance use disorders and other patient protections that are part of the Affordable Care Act, will have detrimental impacts for millions,” APA President-Elect Altha Stewart, M.D., said in a press release issued by APA today. “Mental health is critical to overall health and needs to be equally accessible.”
Among other provisions, APA opposes changes to Medicaid that would result in the loss of coverage for many Americans, including the estimated 2.8 million with substance use disorders and 1.3 million with serious mental illness, who gained coverage for the first time under the expansion of Medicaid under the current law. The proposed changes to Medicaid could also mean fewer resources for fighting the nation’s opioid epidemic.
“The Senate proposal represents a significant move in the wrong direction, resulting in fewer people having access to insurance, fewer patient protections, and less coverage for essential behavioral health care,” said APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A., in the press release. “We urge the Senate to reject this harmful legislation and start again on a health care bill that puts patients first.”
Before the Senate’s proposal was made public, APA expressed significant reservations about how the bill was being drafted without the input of patient and physician groups. In an all-member email sent Monday night, Levin urged members to act. “Mental health and substance use treatment is a bipartisan issue,” Levin wrote. “Over the years, APA has worked with both sides of the aisle to achieve passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008, its expansion to cover mental health and substance use disorders as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and the 21st Century Cures Act in 2016.”
The House version of the bill, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), would leave some 14 million more Americans uninsured next year than under the current law and 23 million more uninsured by 2026. The Senate bill awaits CBO analysis.
Your Voice Counts
APA urges you to contact your senators and speak out against the Senate health care reform bill released today. APA has created a dedicated tool to make it easy for you to voice your opinion via Facebook, Twitter, or phone.
(Image: Mikhail Kolesnikov/Shutterstock)