Health reform a chance for mental health care changes

The Baltimore Sun reports that congressional efforts to reform the health care system could lead to improvements in care for the nation's mentally ill.

One in four uninsured people has a mental health condition, The Baltimore Sun reports, but high costs and complex care needs lead to uncertainty regarding how far proposed reforms could go toward making progress.

"Providing more mental health care will be costly. The bill for health care reform is expected to be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Premiums could rise 1 percent to 3 percent for everyone if basic mental health benefits were mandated, and more for fuller coverage, according to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, which represents small insurance companies." Costs in lost productivity are just as worrisome as the added cost of better care, some say, according to the Sun (Cohn, 10/4).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.