NAMI Expresses Relief that Mental Health Coverage and Protections Remain Intact

Posted on September 26, 2017

Today, the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) expressed relief that the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson health reform bill was pulled from an expected vote this week.

The Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson bill would have resulted in millions losing coverage and the Medicaid program, an indispensable lifeline for people with serious mental illness, would have experienced devastating cuts over the next ten years. With half of all Americans with mental illness going without treatment, we need to improve our nation’s mental health system, not dismantle it.

In recent years, Congress made important strides in improving our mental health system, including enacting mental health and substance use parity. Americans need parity protections to continue—not be taken back to a time when:

• People were denied insurance coverage or charged more because they had a mental health condition.
• People were dropped from their insurance plan or turned down for renewal because they had used mental health services.
• People had yearly or lifetime limits on mental health care—or no mental health benefits at all.

“With today’s action, the important protections in the Affordable Care Act remain intact, preserving indispensable gains in fair coverage of mental health conditions. We hope Congress now comes together in a bipartisan manner to improve mental health coverage and services for the more than 60 million children and adults in our country who live with mental illness.” said Angela Kimball, National Director of Advocacy & Public Policy, NAMI.

About NAMI

NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, is the nation's largest grassroots mental health organization dedicated to building better lives for the millions of Americans affected by mental illness.

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