Mental Health Parity.

"Parity" is defined as "equivalence or equality" and uses the terms "same scale" and "proportionate." Parity is defined as equalizing benefits for mental health care, to bring them in line with benefits for other kinds of health care needs.

Many insurers and health plans exclude or minimize benefits for psychiatric, behavioral, and substance abuse treatment. Mentally ill patients seeking treatment are discriminated against by requiring higher co-payments, allowing fewer doctor visits or days in the hospital, or higher deductibles than imposed on other medical illnesses. Some mentally ill patients do not receive treatment because some health care plans do not cover mental health treatment at all. Companies are not required to offer mental health benefits, nor are they prohibited from offering mental health patients fewer services and higher out-of-pocket costs.

If this disparity is not addressed, the financial and human costs of untreated mental illness will FAR exceed the costs purported by opponents- who believe that simply covering mental health services will exponentially and unfairly increase costs .... but interestingly enough, neglecting to provide coverage at all is more expensive. Mental disorders cost America $99 billion in direct treatment costs and $273 billion a year in ancillary costs - such as lost employment, reduced productivity, criminal justice, traffic accidents, etc, due to untreated mental illness.

Mental health issues are somewhat linked to physical illness and injury anyway. Certain emotional disorders can leave you with constantly high blood pressure which can lead to a heart-attack down the road. Or some light mood disorders can affect an employee's ability to work safely in a potentially hazardous environment. Instead of treating the physical symptoms of mental illnesses, preventing and covering the causes is a lot more practical and cheaper than a hospital visit and possible surgery.

And most psychological issues don't *require* expensive medication. Even covering a monthly visit to a therapist or psychologist, which can be pretty expensive, is enough.

health insurance pays for cures, not healing. that means that the operations and procedures that they approve for insurance are often quick fixes and require more attention later. healing is in essence what people consider 'cures'-- a permanent solution with much more complicated means. id wager that there are just as many psychiatric problems that need care as physical issues, if not more. and the psychiatric issues affect the livelihood of our country far more than any one person's broken ankle.