Re: Censorship Of Views Critical Of Mental Health At Seattle P-I Alleged

February 19, 2004

Rick, This is a great editorial. I wonder who owns the paper. Usually you follow

the

money you find the connections.

In Texas we killed three parity bills in one action. There was this funny woman

from

the Texas Small Business Alliance Springer that went to a legislative

public testimony and

pulled out " disorders " in the DSM IV and had the place rolling in the aisles.

The insurance lobby

was there and man where they taking notes. Insurance companies are a good

friends

when it comes to mental health parity. I watched them, they were amazed that

just reading

from the DSM killed the bills.

This woman pointed out that all of the disorders in the DSM would be covered.

She said she

would love to give her employees insurance but that she cannot afford it for

them.

She argued that mental health parity would actually hurt the insurance industry

because

it would increase the price of insurance and therefore more people and companies

could not afford it and we would have more uninsured and less insurance sold.

I'm not kidding when I say she killed the bills with one testimony. I personally

think

everyone should watch and study what she did as it was so amazingly effective.

I have the link, you will need realplayer, there is a free version on their

website, they hide it but

it's there.

http://www.house.state.tx.us/fx/av/committee78/30407e22.ram

once it starts slide it forward to 1:10:10, Ms. Springer is wearing a red

blouse.

Jim

Censorship Of Views Critical Of Mental Health At

Seattle P-I Alleged

Below is an editorial written by Seattle area psychology instructor

Hoeller opposing the mental health parity legislation now before

the Washington State Legislature. The editorial has been rejected for

publication by on the editorial page of the Seattle

Post-Intelligencer. Hoeller says he has been permanently banned from

publishing op-eds in the P-I. He says he was told this by the reader

representative at the P-I, Glenn Drosendahl. Hoeller believes the P-I

is in part buckling under pressure from the local branch of the

pharmaceutical funded parents organization NAMI and that the paper is

expressing its own pro-mental health editorial bias. Hoeller alleges

that the pressure campaign by NAMI to ban him from the editorial page

of the P-I came after he published an op-ed about Support Coalition

International's hunger strike back in August. This op-ed was rebutted

a few days latter by of NAMI and psychiatrist Ron Sterling.

Hoeller says the P-I has refused to publish his rebuttal of and

Sterling.

The P-I's editorial bias on mental health parity has been expressed in

a February 3 P-I editorial in favor the mental health parity

legislation: " Bill would help mental health care " . What Hoeller

alleges he was told over the phone by Drosendahl and not in writing. I

will be calling and e-mailing the P-I to get a response from them on

this before I write a more lengthy piece and try to get it published

by this weekend. In the meantime, read Hoeller's rejected op-ed on the

mental health parity legislation below. Also, join me in asking P-I

Publisher Oglesby if in fact Hoeller's views are banned from his

paper, while views in line with the American Psychiatric Association

and NAMI are the official and unchallenged editorial position of the

paper: rogeroglesby@.... Be sure to cc Reader Representative

Glenn Rosendahl: glenndrosendahl@.... -Rick

The Bankruptcy Of Mental Health Insurance Parity

Hoeller, Editor

Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry (Seattle, WA)

The symptoms of our health insurance crisis are visible to everyone.

Health insurance costs have been increasing at rates into the

double-digits; employers have been shifting more of the insurance

costs onto employees and eliminating health insurance entirely for

retirees; private health insurance is unaffordable to individuals;

states have been decreasing Medicaid benefits, as well as limiting

health coverage for the poor; and 44 million Americans still remain

without health care insurance.

It is hard to imagine how politicians could make this situation worse.

But they already have done so with the new Medicare prescription bill.

While this bill will provide only paltry drug coverage for most

seniors, it will guarantee megabillions for the drug companies, since

it forbids the government from negotiating lower volume prices. And

the cost, estimated only last Fall at $400 billion over 10 years, has

already been recalculated as reaching at least $550 billion, or

one-third more than the original estimate.

But there is another idea on the political horizon that will surely

damage our health insurance crisis even more than this costly Medicare

prescription bill: mental health insurance parity. Mental health

providers and lay groups, including many who receive financial support

from the drug companies, have been pushing to have government mandate

equal health insurance for diagnosis and treatment of mental illness.

Their argument goes like this: Since mental illnesses are real

illnesses " just like any other, " their treatment should be covered by

health insurance just as much as other physical diseases.

But there are two significant ways in which mental illnesses are

precisely NOT like other illnesses.

The first is that mental illnesses are not illnesses at all. Mental

health supporters have yet to produce a scintilla of scientific

evidence that ANY mental illness is in fact biologically caused.

Psychiatrists have not in fact conclusively proven that any mental

illness is in fact a chemical imbalance of the brain (the latest in a

long line of psychiatric theories). Not surprisingly, psychiatrists

have also not produced a single physical test that can detect any such

mental illness.

People who have been diagnosed with a mental illness have either not

been physically tested or their physical tests have shown they are in

fact healthy according to every bodily test known to modern medicine.

The second problem is that psychiatrists are the only medical doctors

whose practice rests on the use of force on unwilling " patients. "

While psychiatrists regularly hospitalize mental patients and treat

them against their will, no other doctors do this.

And the use of force in psychiatry has been increasing, not

decreasing. More people are involuntarily committed now than 50 years

ago, and many released patients are forced to take psychiatric drugs

for years on end. Our own King County Mental Health Court routinely

issues orders that force released citizens to take medications or risk

losing their freedom. Indeed, our own civil commitment laws were

expanded in the 1990s beyond simply " dangerous to self and others, " to

allow for the re-hospitalization of ex-patients who stop taking their

medications.

Mental health supporters argue that mandating mental health coverage

will result in little increase in insurance costs. Such an argument

boggles the mind when you realize that they are mandating that

insurance pay for billions of dollars of treatments they do not now

cover. Either insurers will have to increase fees, or else they will

have to cut coverage for regular physical diseases.

We may end up with health insurance that will not pay for the

chemotherapy that might cure your terminal cancer, but it will pay for

the antidepressants which they claim will alleviate your depression at

the thought that you are now going to die.

The idea that health insurance should pay for involuntary treatment is

morally bankrupt at best.

But putting into practice the idea that you can get mental health

coverage without any increase in insurance is a modern version of the

" you can get something for nothing " mentality that politicians have

been promising from time immemorial.

Our own state's mental health insurance parity bill has passed the

House and is now in the Senate. Passage of this bill is sure to

bankrupt our health care system and erode the civil rights of every

Washington state resident

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February 19, 2004

I had heard this account from somebody else and now that I have watched the

video

it doesn't appear to be as funny as mentioned but does look like it was

effective

in preventing the DSM from being written into law.

Jim

Rick, This is a great editorial. I wonder who owns the paper. Usually you

follow the

money you find the connections.

In Texas we killed three parity bills in one action. There was this funny

woman from