The Oregonian ran an editorial inspired by a review of Oregon’s “parity” law:
A study reaffirms Oregon’s law forcing insurers to stop discriminating against persons with mental illness, and bolsters similar federal legislation
For a shamefully long time, Oregon lawmakers bought the insurance industry’s claim that requiring “parity” — coverage of mental health and substance abuse equal to that for other medical treatment — was just too expensive.
So it wasn’t until 2005, after 35 other states had passed parity laws, that legislators finally heeded the pleas of Oregonians devastated by mental illness and addiction, and approved the nation’s strongest parity law. To the bitter end, parity foes warned of massive costs and people being kicked off insurance plans.
It didn’t happen. A powerful new study by a group of researchers led by K. John McConnell, a health economist at Oregon Health & Science University, has found that Oregon’s parity law did not prompt a stampede to costly mental health or addiction treatment.
In fact, a comparison of four years of cost data for more than 100,000 people subject to parity and nearly 19,000 people whose self-insurance plans were not subject to the law found that there were similar increases in spending on mental health and substance abuse for both groups. The study concludes: “Expenditures attributable to the parity law were … close to zero.”
That finding is a reaffirmation of Oregon’s parity law, and more broadly and timely, an answer to those who insist that national parity legislation that took effect last year is unaffordable and wrongly prevents managed-care organizations from putting sideboards on mental health and substance abuse treatment.
Read the whole story in The Oregonian.
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