Sovereign Health Announces a New Article in 'The Hill' on Behavioral Healthcare Access

SAN CLEMENTE, Calif., Jan. 18, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Sovereign Health, a national behavioral health system, is pleased to announce the launch of a new article that's now live on The Hill: "How the disease model helps and hurts mental healthcare." This article, written and edited by Dana Connolly, Ph.D., and Susan Logan-McCracken, M.P.W., explains how the barrier to behavioral healthcare access has been financial and discusses the unwillingness of insurance companies to pay for the high costs of treatment.

As this editorial notes, The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 is a federal law that generally prevents group health plans and health insurance issuers that provide mental health or substance use disorder benefits from imposing less favorable benefit limitations on those benefits than on medical/surgical benefits.

The recent passage of the 21st Century Cures Act will hopefully improve the parity problem by toughening enforcement of parity laws. This sweeping legislation (HR 6, HR 34 and related bills) will serve many purposes, including: developing a new federal guideline for compliance with parity laws; improving federal and state coordination with regard to parity compliance; releasing annual reports of all closed federal investigations of alleged parity violations; requiring the Government Accountability Office to study enforcement of parity laws and make recommendations for improvement; and developing new resources and educational programs to ensure that parity applies to those with eating disorders and other serious mental illnesses.

This new article follows recent Sovereign Health editorials, "Why all the opium in the world won't make America happy," which explains how the U.S. consumes almost all of the world's opium in the form of prescription opioid painkillers and heroin; and "The mysterious sealed opioid report fuels speculation," which discusses the opioid epidemic continuing to worsen in the U.S., yet the Senate Finance Committee still has an investigation report sealed.

About the Authors

Dana Connolly, Ph.D., is a senior staff writer for Sovereign Health, where she translates current research into practical information. She earned her Ph.D. in research and theory development from New York University and has decades of experience in clinical care, medical research and health education.

Susan Logan-McCracken, M.P.W., is an editor for Sovereign Health and an award-winning author. Logan-McCracken has 25 years of experience as a journalist, most recently as the editor of Cat Fancy magazine.

About Sovereign Health

Sovereign Health's mission is to provide a broad spectrum of high-quality behavioral health treatment services for adults and adolescents, including support services for family members. One factor that differentiates Sovereign from other treatment providers has been the company's ability to offer separate mental health and addiction or dual diagnosis treatment programs at its facilities. For more information, visit www.SovHealth.com.

SOURCE Sovereign Health