NYN’s First Read – An article by Tim Murphy

Recently, the Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul enacted a mandate in the newest state budget saying that mental health and addiction service providers statewide must be reimbursed by private health plans at rates at least on par with Medicaid reimbursements. The mandate was the culmination of a decade-long fight for the mandate on the part of the New York State Council for Community Behavioral Healthcare, an advocacy group for community mental health and substance treatment providers statewide, who’ve long said that the paltry reimbursement on private plans forces them to turn away needy patients.

The mandate, say the providers, will help expand care and treatment for countless New Yorkers experiencing opioid addiction – particularly in New York City, which reported an all-time-high for overdose deaths in 2022. And according to the council, the mandate is also good news for the one in three residents of New York state facing a mental health issue.

New York Nonprofit Media spoke on May 23 with Albany-based Lauri Cole, executive director of the half-century-old , about the long pathway to victory on the mandate, the other things that the council does, and the personal experiences that drive her work.

The full article is available online here:
https://www.nynmedia.com/personality/2024/06/fighting-make-sure-new-yorks-community-based-mental-health-providers-have-resources-they-need/397379/

Compiled by Angelique Molina-Mangaroo
Tuesday, June 25, 2024
Opinion: New York is ending discriminatory insurance practices

Imagine you’ve contracted a debilitating illness, so you try to find a doctor to treat you. Then you find out that most healthcare providers won’t accept you as a patient because the insurance you have won’t adequately reimburse them for the cost of the treatment. As a result, you call every doctor in your community day after day, only to find that the list your insurance carrier gave you only included doctors not offering this care or others who aren’t even accepting new patients.

For decades, this is the stark reality many individuals with commercial insurance coverage have encountered when seeking mental health or substance use disorder treatment in New York state.

Why is this considered an acceptable standard for those living with mental illness or addiction? When left untreated, these medical conditions can have lasting detrimental impacts including premature death and permanent disability. For far too long, this discriminatory reimbursement practice has been a reality of life for millions of New Yorkers. Now, thanks to Gov. Hochul and the state Legislature, this discrimination will finally end.

Read more here.

– Lauri Cole