Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON - Despite strong support in the House and the Senate, a popular bill to improve mental health insurance coverage has stalled once more, leaving Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy and other backers determined to renew their push for the legislation after Labor Day.

In one sense, prospects for enactment of "mental health parity,'' as the measure is known in the shorthand of Capitol Hill, are as solid as ever. But with relatively few work days left to finish action on an already limited election-year agenda, champions of parity will resume their efforts in September with some anxiety about the tyranny of the congressional timetable.

A look at the balance sheet on parity illustrates how even the most broadly supported initiatives can be thrown off course in the treacherous crosscurrents of a presidential campaign season.

Looked at on its own terms, parity has followed a clear -- if sometimes halting -- path toward the law books. Rhode Island Democrat Kennedy is a longtime supporter of legislation that would require insurance companies to cover mental health claims on par with claims for the treatment of physical ailments or injuries, hence the term "parity." Kennedy has pursued the cause with special vigor since a highly publicized automobile accident drove him into drug and alcohol treatment in 2006. Along the way, Kennedy found a personal and legislative partnership with Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., a veteran legislator and recovering alcoholic. The two men launched a series of hearings around the country to promote parity legislation in 2007, often recounting how good medical insurance was a factor in their own treatment.

Meanwhile in the Senate, two longtime boosters of parity, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., and Sen. Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M., joined with a key Republican on health issues, Sen. Mike Enzi, Wyo., to put leading members of the medical, business, mental health and insurance lobbies together in negotiations that produced an agreement early in 2007 on a parity bill acceptable to all concerned. The bill quietly passed the Senate without opposition last year.

Early this year, the more generous Kennedy-Ramstad bill passed the House easily, setting up bargaining for a possible compromise. The makings of a deal were within reach this past spring when the elder Kennedy, who is Patrick Kennedy's father, suffered a seizure that led to his diagnosis of brain cancer and to subsequent treatments. During Kennedy's absence, Senate negotiators have struggled to find a financing mechanism that would command bipartisan consensus.

Last week, the financing arrangement was found and the resulting parity compromise was written into a much larger package of so-called "extenders,'' various tax provisions that are due to expire and must therefore be extended in law.

This week, the tax-extenders, too, became entangled in something larger: the tense partisan showdowns over energy legislation that have been enacted against a backdrop of high gasoline prices and the rush to the late-summer congressional recess that will encompass next month's Democratic and Republican National Conventions. On Tuesday and again on Wednesday, the Senate failed to muster enough votes to limit debate on the tax-extenders bill, so it has not been allowed to come to a vote. Indirectly, the partisan fight over domestic oil drilling, alternative energy tax credits and other such issues have touched the debate on extenders.

Patrick Kennedy issued a statement saying that the parliamentary skirmishing on the tax-extenders issue "was strictly about the main substance of the tax extenders bill, not about mental health parity. There remains a strong bipartisan coalition in support of mental health parity, and I look forward to working with my colleagues to pass this legislation when Congress reconvenes in September."

 Tags  Edward M. Kennedy mental health parity Patrick Kennedy

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