National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc.

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

President’s Priority:
“CITIZENS HEALTH CARE WORKING GROUP”

 We struggle with many defensive battles in the ongoing onslaught against health care by the powerful ideology-promoting machinery and by the powerful vested financial interests in our nation. These are necessary fights, struggles that cannot be ignored or relegated to limited importance.  

Proactive campaigns can provide opportunities to engage the larger context, to impact the larger system within which these defensive battles must be fought, and within which these onslaughts against the public well-being are cultured like the deadly viruses they are. 

I believe that we have a top priority for proactive work – the Congressionally-mandated “…nationwide public debate about improving the health care system to provide every American with the ability to obtain quality affordable health care coverage.” This is, of course, the mandate given to the newly appointed “CITIZENS HEALTH CARE WORKING GROUP.”

 There is a striking similarity between the law creating the Health Care Working Group and the strategy which created the Privacy (Disclosure) Rule – the regulations authorizing over 600,000 financially-gaining entities to see Americans' medical records without their consent. A provision was added to the laws—e.g., “Administrative Simplification,” to HIPAA, with full control in practicality handed over to the sitting HHS Secretary (read as sitting U.S. President).

 Just as Congress and HHS held Hearings on health care privacy, this Citizens Health Care Working Group will hold hearings. Since those HIPAA hearings were stacked in favor of groups wanting greater access to patients' medical records and HHS essentially ignored thousands of public comments when revising the final federal rule, what can we expect from this “Citizens Health Care Working Group?”

 We know what a travesty the HIPAA Privacy (Disclosure) Rule has been – all window dressing and doublespeak in propaganda that has left us with nothing but the eliminated rights of the people, and the granting of those very rights - through “regulatory permission” to over 600,000 financially-gaining entities – to have control over our personal health information – we battle on in this defensive fight – see www.TheNationalCoalition.org  

From the February 28, 2005, press release, “ Comptroller General of the United States David M. Walker today is naming 14 members of the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, the first step in a two-year process to hold a national dialogue on issues related to health care services, delivery and cost. By law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) will serve as the 15th member of the Working Group.” See the appointees at: http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/citizenshealthpr0228.pdf

Named as Chair is Randall L. Johnson who for the past 22 years has worked at Motorola designing the health care benefits for Motorola employees, retirees, and their families, has been corporate director of human resources strategies and the company’s spokesperson on human resource. On the boards of the ERISA Industry Committee and the American Benefits Council, and on various Business Roundtable committees, he has served as an “employer advisor” to the Wye River Group ( http://wrgh.org/ ), which has stated it “seeks solutions to extend, improve, and market health care coverage.”

The Wye River Group was once touted as our next Jackson Hole Group, and we all know where that got us – to the Managed Care/HMO profit-making industry takeover our nation has suffered under while propaganda to this very day keeps telling us all that this middleman model is reducing America’s health costs. Managed Care is only staying alive on permanent life-support provided by federal perpetual care = Congressional/Presidential approved subsidies, all funded by the taxpayers, of course! 

Access Advocates Must Make Sustained Efforts the Priority - broaden this narrow debate that frighteningly ignores most options for reform and cost cutting!

We must  take part everywhere possible to correctly broaden this national debate into a truly comprehensive debate, which stands some chance of arriving at workable planning to achieve affordable access for all, to a full range of health care services, which would truly promote prevention and make fully available assessment and treatment services of the highest quality.  

Mental health and substance abuse care coverage are at genuine risk. As you can see below, the 2003 Medicare law setting up the Citizens Health Care Working Group took the position that people using health care services are to blame

for the increasingly high insurance premiums. The law, through this group, promotes the idea that costs can be cut by eliminating coverage for low priority services—and that the public must be responsible for deciding what we want

covered, what we will trade-off for, and what health care services we will do without.

 The public—average citizens who are already misinformed and disinformed by the healthcare industries—will be asked to decide what are the low priorities on

their list of preferred covered services. Even if the fix is not already in for the outcome of this Citizens Working Group, what do you predict will become of coverage for substance abuse and mental health care? More “Take 12 steps and call me in the morning”; and “See your PCP for depression screening and deciding the right Rx for you!” The stigma attached to emotional problems and substance abuse promotes (demotes) the services to address these problems to “last on the list.”

Everyone Must Get Ready to Make Our Voices Heard and Heeded!

Every citizen likely will be directly impacted by the new Health Care Working Group, we must all be prepared to voice our ideas, our needs, and our fears about the direction our country is heading on health care – into further deterioration, into a distinctly two-tiered delivery of care system, and into further undermining of our historic commitment to the common good. 

Get involved now, and throughout the next 2 years by using the “ACTION NEEDED” flyer info – in this issue - and by distributing this flyer as widely as you can.    Thank you all for all you are doing!                                 Dave Byrom