House to Vote Friday on Senate-Approved Stopgap Spending Measure
The House of Representatives is expected to vote Friday on the short-term spending bill the Senate approved Thursday to avert a federal government shutdown and increase aid to Ukraine.
Included in the legislation is a provision to continue funding the national 988 behavioral crisis hotline through Sept. 30, 2023, for which Congress has
appropriated $62,000,000.
TODAY: SAMHSA to Moderate Recovery Month Panel at 1:15 p.m. ET
Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary Tom Coderre of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) will moderate a panel discussion at 1:15 p.m. ET today, Friday, Sept. 30, the last day of National Recovery Month.
Titled “Making Small Choices, Every Day,” the event will feature panelists who will discuss their recovery experiences while sharing success stories and providing hope that recovery is possible. The panel will address seeking treatment for mental illness or substance use disorders, overcoming challenges such as stigma, and helping the public understand the importance of helping those in recovery.
SAMHSA will livestream the event on the agency’s Facebook
page.
House Passes Bill to Bolster Mental Health Parity Protections for Workers
The House earlier this week passed the
Mental Health Matters Act of 2022, a bill intended to hold employer-based health plans more accountable for inappropriate denials of mental health and substance use benefits.
The legislation would give the U.S. Labor Department more authority to enforce plan requirements under the
Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act. It also would ban forced arbitration agreements when plans deny benefits improperly, and ensure a fair standard of review from the courts.
Before the bill passed, the White House released a
Statement of Administrative Policy supporting the legislation. The White House noted that the
Mental Health Matters Act also would improve the well-being of young children in Head Start and K-12 schools by building on President Biden’s efforts to increase the number of school-based mental health services providers, as well as authorizing grants to partnerships between high-need, local educational agencies, and institutions of higher education.
NABH will continue to track developments related to this bill.
CMS Releases Latest Enrollment Figures for Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) this week released the agency’s latest enrollment figures for Medicare, Medicaid & the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and the health insurance marketplaces, reporting that 156.5 million Americans have coverage in these federal health insurance programs.
According to the latest figures, there are 89.4 million enrollees in Medicaid and CHIP, 64.6 million enrollees in Medicare, and 14.5 million people enrolled in state-based and federal health insurance marketplaces. The agency reported a subtotal figure of 168.5 million enrollees, which CMS then adjusted by subtracting 12 million to account for Americans who are dually eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.
Click
here for a breakdown of the individual programs.
Former ONDCP Leaders Pen Opinion Piece on Increasing Recovery Services
On this last day of National Recovery Month, two former leaders at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy wrote an
opinion piece in
The Hill newspaper to call for more training in addiction science and policymaking.
In their blog, former ONDCP Director Michael Botticelli and Regina LaBelle, a former acting director at ONDCP and director of the Addiction and Public Policy Initiative at the Georgetown University Law Center’s O’Neill Institute, recognized the role that people in recovery play by building healthier communities. They also emphasized the need to remove barriers to healthcare, housing, and employment and education, including modifying the regulatory hurdles that reduce access to methadone.
Enhanced NABH Denial-of-Care Portal is Now Available
NABH recently made enhancements to its Denial-of-Care Portal that are intended to make the portal easier for members to use.
A year ago, NABH developed the Denial-of-Care Portal to collect specific data on insurers who deny care—often without regard to parity or the effects on patients. Now the association has updated this resource to make it more user-friendly for members and also more aligned with what regulators need to identify parity violations.
The updated portal includes fewer questions, which will require less time for members to complete. In addition, all questions are now optional. NABH hopes this will make it more likely for members to share the data they have. Lastly, NABH has added a checklist of “red flags” that were included in the
2022 MHPAEA Report to Congress from the U.S. Health and Human Services, Labor, and Treasury Departments in January.
Please e-mail
Emily Wilkins, NABH’s administrative coordinator, if you have questions about the portal.
Save the Date for the NABH 2023 Annual Meeting!
Please mark your calendars and plan to join us in Washington, DC from
June 12-14, 2023 for next year’s NABH Annual Meeting!
Fact of the Week
Early intervention in psychosis programs contributed to, on average, 3.2 fewer hospitalizations and 2.7 more years employed during the course of patients’ lives compared with individuals with the same diagnosis who received standard care, according to a
study published in
Psychiatric Services.
For questions or comments about this CEO Update, please contact Jessica Zigmond