WASHINGTON--The House of Representatives Wednesday evening approved mental health care benefits parity legislation, setting the stage for a showdown with the Senate, which last year passed a different parity measure.
The House bill--which passed on a 268-148 vote--would require group health care plans to offer the same coverage for mental disorders as they do for other medical conditions.
That requirement would force many employers to upgrade their mental heath benefits coverage. Many employers, for example, now limit the number of annual outpatient visits to mental health care providers but do not impose comparable limits for other medical conditions.
The House bill, H.R. 1424, would require coverage for all mental health care services listed in the most recent edition of a diagnostic treatment manual published by the American Psychiatric Assn.
The Senate's version, however, would let employers decide what conditions would be covered.
The House's coverage requirement has drawn the opposition from several business groups and the Bush administration, which says it would have a "negative effect" on the accessibility and affordability of employer-provided coverage. The administration says it supports the Senate bill as striking the right balance of expanding coverage without significantly increasing health care costs.
The two bills now go to a House-Senate conference committee, which will try to work out differences and craft a compromise bill. It isn't known when the committee will begin to meet.
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