How Mental Health Care Provision Got Into Bailout Bill. And just where can you find more explanations to what it is that this bill does anyway.

I don't know if everyone heard this, but the reason that mental health care parity was mandated by the bailout bill (I'll call it a bailout bill if I want) is that the House must first pass any bill that involves spending the taxpayer's money. That's because they must face Americans every two years and the house is a more democratic institution.  The Senate is more representative of the Republic, the confederation of supposedly semi sovereign states that our nation is supposedly composed (until the Republicans get control of the White House and Congress).           

Since the House hadn't passed a bill on the bailout, the Senate which was meeting earlier than the House and of which only 1/3 of their people had to run again this year took it up Wednesday night (after sundown) by dragging out the mental health parity bill the House had passed and sent to the Senate earlier this year and reworking it.

The first of the bill (See PDF copy stored at McClatchy News )  as sent back to the House read:

AMENDMENT NO.llll Calendar No.lll
Purpose: In the nature of a substitute.
IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES—110th Cong., 2d Sess.
H. R. 1424
To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health
Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code
of 1986 to require equity in the provision of mental
health and substance-related disorder benefits under
group health plans, to prohibit discrimination on the
basis of genetic information with respect to health insurance
and employment, and for other purposes.
Referred to the Committee on llllllllll and
ordered to be printed
Ordered to lie on the table and to be printed
AMENDMENT IN THE NATURE OF A SUBSTITUTE intended
to be proposed by lllllll
Viz:
1 Strike all after the enacting clause and insert the fol2
lowing:

McClatchy has a guide to this genuine copy of the bill at  "No kitchen sink in bailout bill, but there's lots of other stuff".

 Another explanation of the bill is at Washington Post's Explainer "Explainer: How the Senate Rescue Bill Is Different"

We could have posted this days ago, but forgot during the week  when we work hard and don't have a lot of time to ruminate that the Senate bill would have to be accepted as is by the House to prevent a conference committee and a joint chamber vote which I don't believe happened.

So, if you're registered at WP or they let you in their report without it, you can get a nice reworded explanation of the parts or you can get a guide to and a copy of the original bill at McClatchy which hasn't required registration for us.

One thing I know.  Wall Street had a gun to our head and wasn't afraid to use it, with or without Congressional help so I'm not as angry with Congress as some.  

Some of the angriest people though as ones that don't do the hard work of outreach over many years.

You can't just explode in a hissy fit when things don't go your way if you aren't spreading the truth online offline, with friends and family, etc.

Well, you can, but it won't get you much of anywhere, even if you do.

tags: financial crisis  bailout bill  congress  mental health care  

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