Health Care Reform Messages

Every day in the national media there are reports of the debates, discussions, proposals, and controversies about national health care reform. This is a very complicated arena.

Here are the highlights of CHADD's priorities for health care reform (as of today).

CHADD, as a member of the National Health Council Voluntary Health Agencies, advocates five principles in addressing health care reform, as part of the Council's "Campaign to Put Patients First" initiative:

1. Cover everyone
2. Curb costs responsibly
3. Abolish exclusions for pre-existing conditions
4. Eliminate lifetime caps
5. Ensure long term and end-of-life care

At CHADD's encouragement, each NHC principle includes an emphasis on "non-discrimination between health conditions."

CHADD, as a member of the Campaign for Mental Health Reform, advocates the following priorities for mental health in health care reform:

6. Parity for mental health conditions in health benefit design; something stronger than "nothing in this legislation shall prevent implementation of mental health parity" and

adequacy of the mental health benefit for subpopulations, such as children.
7. Chronic Care-Chronic Condition Management must include mental illness and mental disorders, such as serious and persistent mental illnesses such as schizophrenia, co-occurring physical illness and mental illness such as health attack/stroke and depression, and co-occurring mental disorders such as the AD/HD child mental disorder co-occurring prevalence data. Focus on lifelong disorders.
8. Encouragement of the "medical home" concept whereby professionals take responsibility for coordinating, integrating, and communicating services and supports. Included in this are consumer-family access to electronic medical records and implementation of personal health records.
9. Affirmative provisions dealing with racial and ethnic disparities, and affirmative provisions recognizing "disability based health disparities."

There are many other important priorities. These are CHADD's current priorities, through our membership in these two coalitions. CHADD belongs to many other Washington, DC-based coalitions.

Let us know if there are any very important principles missing from our current priorities. Get involved with your senators and representatives in the U.S. Congress to ensure that these priorities are included.

Clarke