Projo Politics Blog

WASHINGTON _ Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy's mental health parity bill appears to be down to its last shot in the legislative ping-pong that has frustrated supporters for months.

A ``clean'' version of the bill overwhelmingly passed the House last week, but it is apparently dead in a standoff with the Senate over financing and procedural issues that are not related to the substance of the mental health legislation.

The purpose of the parity bill is to require insurance companies that offer health coverage to handle mental illness on an equal footing with physical illness and injury.

The ``pay-for'' squabbles aside, the idea of mental health parity has now become widely embraced now both houses of Congress.

The measure may also enjoy some intangible momentum because of its pedigree. Kennedy's chief partner on the House bill is Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn., who is also the Rhode Island Democrat's sponsor in the program he has followed for more than two years to recover from drug addiction and alcoholism.

On the Senate side, the lead proponents of parity have been Sen. Pete V. Domenici, R-N.M., who has a grown daughter with schizophrenia, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., Patrick's father.

Domenici and Ramstad, both popular figures among their colleagues, are stepping down after this Congress adjourns. Senator Kennedy, likewise revered on both sides of the aisle, was diagnosed last spring with a malignant brain tumor.

As Congress rushes this week to adjourn for the year, the supporters of parity are reduced to Plan B: passage of their mental health initiative as an attachment to an amalgamation of tax measures large and small -- H.R. 6049 -- that passed the Senate 93-to-2 last week.

The tax bill has been considered very likely to pass because it includes such popular items as a mechanism to reduce the impact of the very unpopular alternative miniumum tax on the middle class. But there's a problem with the so-called tax-extenders bill. Fiscal conservatives in the House Democratic Caucus have vowed to oppose it because the do not consider it properly paid for.

Therefore the House today will attempt to pass the extenders in separate chunks that are financed in ways acceptable to the ``Blue Dog'' Democrats. But with the clock running out, the Senate has plainly signalled its opposition to that approach.

That means the best hope for parity now is this: once their piecemeal tax approach is rebuffed by the Senate, House leaders will take the position that they have done their best to address the financing questions. Then they will present the Senate's catch-all extenders bill to the full House.

Kennedy said he hopes his colleagues -- supportive of the parity provision and mindful of voter opposition to the spreading effects of the alternative minimum tax -- will swallow their reservations about the payment mechanism and pass the bill.

``That's my Hail Mary pass for parity,'' Kennedy said last evening as he awaited a meeting with House leaders on the historic financial market rescue that kept Congress at work through a rare weekend session.

 Tags  Kennedy mental health parity

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