[NYAPRS Enews] J News: Insurers Have No Room to Complain About The Advent Of Timothy's Law

[Harvey Rosenthal]

Insurers Have No Room to Complain About the Advent Of Timothy's Law 

 Journal News Editorial   January 26, 2007

 

It's hard to muster sympathy for insurance companies complaining they
can't get their act together quickly enough to comply with Timothy's
Law, a modest first step in required mental-health coverage that took
effect in New York Jan. 1.

 

The industry fought such a "mental health parity" law for almost two
decades. Prior to final approval last year, the measure frequently came
tantalizingly close to passage. Grass-roots lobbying finally got the job
done in December, over the phalanx of business and health-care lobbyists
arrayed against it. Perhaps some of those workers could be redeployed to
help insurers get Timothy's Law off the ground.

 

The law provides every insured person a minimum of 20 outpatient visits
for mental illness and 30 inpatient treatment days a year. The state
will pick up the extra cost of providing coverage for businesses with 50
or fewer employees. Larger employers must provide some additional
coverage for serious psychiatric disorders in adults.

 

Insurance officials told Albany reporter Cara Matthews that passage of
the bill Dec. 13, its signing by then-Gov. George Pataki Dec. 22 and a
leadership change in many state agencies, including the Insurance
Department, has made implementing the law difficult. There are
"thousands of man hours'' involved in changing computer systems and
training staff, said Jim Redmond, a spokesman for an upstate division of
Blue Cross Blue Shield. Normally, he said, insurers would get six months
to a year to put such a complex mandate into effect. "It's a little like
trying to tune the motor on a car while the engine's running,'' he said.

 

So is trying to function with a mental or emotional illness and worrying
about how to pay for treatment - or foregoing care altogether. That has
long been the fate of millions of New Yorkers. Insurers are now
obligated to cover their care. They need to get the word out now to
their members that they are up for the fight.

 

http://www.nynews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070126/OPINION/701260
339/1151 

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