National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc.

an educational foundation and advocacy organization serving mental health consumers and professionals

Told the public and professionals the truth about managed mental health care!

The National Coalition was one of the first to and now continues to spread the truth about managed mental health care: it deprives patients of needed treatment, it takes scarce funding away from patients and puts it into administration and profit, it punishes the competent and conscientious professionals, it misleads the public about its effectiveness, and it encourages unethical professional behavior.

The National Coalition helped create almost every major media exposé of managed mental health care. Its members are the most quoted opponents to managed care, and it locates consumers who are willing to speak publicly about their managed care treatment. Its accomplishments include major stories in The Family Therapy Networker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, and U. S. News and World Report, and on CNN Special Reports, 60 Minutes, and Nightline.

When the professional organizations could only recommend grieving the loss of our profession, the National Coalition steadfastly pushed them to confront the unethical and unprofessional actions of managed care. Its members are active leaders in all professional organizations. In psychology, Dr. Karen Shore, President of the National Coalition, has been voted the Psychologist of the Year for 1997 for the Division of Independent Practice for her leadership in the battle against managed care.

The members of the National Coalition wrote articles in major journals that expose the unethical behavior of managed care; confronting managed care about the immorality of depriving consumers of privacy in psychotherapy, the right to choose a professional, and the right to control the treatment of their own minds and bodies; revealing that managed care does not make treatment economical, but merely secretly eliminates treatment in a process of invisible rationing; and showing that managed care bases its cost-cutting methods on fictional research findings. These articles form the core of the professional literature needed to confront managed care abuses.

The National Coalition has written innovative model legislation, analyzed legislation, prepared lobbying packages, provided information for state lobbying, and sent petitions to the President. In addition, through its e-mail network, it provides on-going legislative alerts. During the election campaign it sent political packets to all congressional and presidential candidates.

The National Coalition coordinates efforts of 18 state affiliates, publishes a bi-monthly newsletter, has held two national conferences, maintains web pages, and maintains a national e-mail network for local leaders.

The National Coalition created a network of mental health professionals and attorneys that has been involved in the formative stages of several lawsuits against managed care and the creation of the Legal Center for Patients Rights. It is continuing to develop legal challenges to managed care.

With Your Help, What Can The Coalition Do? 

Continue its focus on the value of talk therapy – psychotherapy – human help rather than drugs!

Talk Therapy includes psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, counseling, marriage therapy, family therapy, group therapy, psycho-education groups, addiction treatment groups and programs, parent training groups, anger management programs, and many other therapies. There are dozens of effective means to deal with human distress that involve talk between qualified professionals and people seeking help.  

Drug Companies and Insurers insist that mental health problems are due to “biological imbalances,” which require only medication.

Drug Companies and Insurers have a systematically discredited psychotherapy. Since the 1980s, benefits for mental health treatments have been slashed from 6% to less than 2% of all mental health payments.

Financial gain by drug companies and insurers is the basis for their attempts to discredit talk therapy as effective mental health treatment.

Lobby for patient privacy and confidentiality
Now, in order to obtain treatment under managed care, patients must expose personal information to antagonistic and judgmental utilization reviewers, must allow personal information to be stored in electronic data banks, and must tolerate having personal information available among numerous insurance industry employees. On the other hand, the operations of managed care are proprietary and confidential. This is backwards. With your help and membership, the National Coalition advocates for privacy for patients and disclosure for corporations.

Expose and confront the "sugar puffed outcome data" of managed care!
In spite of the destructive impact that most professionals and consumers have witnessed, managed care plans flood the marketplace with outcome data that mislead the public -- making it appear that patients are better off in managed care. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will expose how this outcome data is "sugar coated" to give a better impression than the true outcomes, and it is "puffed" to inflate its size.

Maintain pressure on professional organizations to take action against managed care.
Although more professional organizations are speaking against managed care, behind the scenes there is a strong movement to neutralize professional organizations, to protect the profits of those who invested in managed care.

Lobby Congress and the President for true reform and replacing managed care
The government has been forced to admit that managed care is not working, but still is enchanted with its ability to reduce expenses. Much proposed legislation is just decoration on the tip of the managed care iceberg. Managed care must be forced to disclose its finances, its secret treatment guidelines, its hidden policies for denying treatment, and its hidden financial incentives. Once these are disclosed, the public will see what professionals witness daily - managed care is the worst possible health care system

Control costs without devastating the incomes of professionals
Cost controls are possible without lowering professional income to the point that qualified professionals must leave the field. Consumers want their health care professionals to earn a fair income, but managed care, which responds only to the bottom line and not to quality, blindly squeezes salaries below professional levels. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will join with consumers in fighting for reasonable pay for professionals.