Getting Mental Health Coverage Wrong
posted by John Jacobi
Thanks to Frank for inviting me to review Barak Richman, Daniel Grossman, and Frank Sloan’s chapter, Fragmentation in Mental Health Benefits and Services, in Our Fragmented Health Care System: Causes and Solutions (Einer Elhauge, ed. 2010). The book is important and provocative. The chapter on the fragmentation of mental health care couldn’t address a more timely issue.
People with serious mental illness, more than most other patients, struggle with health system fragmentation. As the Institute of Medicine described it,
Mental and substance-use (M/SU) problems and illnesses seldom occur in isolation. They frequently accompany each other, as well as a substantial number of general medical illnesses such as heart disease, cancers, diabetes, and neurological illnesses. *** Improving the quality of M/SU health care—and general health care—depends upon the effective collaboration of all mental, substance-use, general health care, and other human service providers in coordinating the care of their patients. *** However, these diverse providers often fail to detect and treat (or refer to other providers to treat) these co-occurring problems and also fail to collaborate in the care of these multiple health conditions—placing their patients’ health and recovery in jeopardy.
By some estimates, formerly institutionalized people with serious mental illness experience about 25 fewer years of life, mostly due to the effects of treatable physical illnesses such as cardiovascular, pulmonary and infectious diseases. The effects of this health system fragmentation are experienced notwithstanding parity legislation, and they are felt also by people in the community with less serious mental illness, often because their primary care providers can’t find mental health providers to whom they can refer.
In Fragmentation in Mental Health Benefits and Services, the authors approach mental health system fragmentation by telling a story of the relationship between health insurance structure and income redistribution. The authors address the interrelationship between insurance “carve-outs” for mental health care and the growth of mental health parity laws. They assert that the carve out of behavioral health coverage from medical insurance provokes states to pass mental health parity laws. According to the authors, these parity laws fail to help their “intended” beneficiaries, and instead serve to redistribute resources away from low income and non-White employees.
To make their case, they mine a database of claims data for privately insured North Carolina patients. These claims data allow them to track employees’ (and, presumably, their dependents’) use of mental health services. Along the way, they raise several important issues. For example, they suggest that care provided by mental health providers may not be particularly efficacious. (299) Few would disagree that in most areas of health care – including mental health care – comparative effectiveness research is essential. In addition, they suggest that access to and benefit from covered services varies by income and race. (298-99) It is undoubtedly true that there are class-based and race-based disparities in access to health care; this is so much discussed, in fact, that it somewhat puzzling that the authors would characterize as a “regularly overlooked question” the fact that “equal insurance and access does not translate into equitable consumption.” (279)
On some points, the authors seem to go a bit beyond their data. First, the authors assert (without citation) that mental health parity is “often” pursued “to benefit low-income and traditionally vulnerable populations.” (284) Many advocates (myself included) have argued for parity as a civil rights matter: as people with physical illness have access to insurance coverage, so should people with mental illness. Certainly, insurance coverage is most valuable for those without the means to pay for care out of pocket, but that is as true for cardiac care as for mental health care. From this perspective, parity legislation seems no more a redistributive move than any other form of health insurance.
Second, and to distinguish parity legislation from other forms of insurance, the authors establish that the people of color and low-income insureds are less likely than others to take advantage of access to mental health practitioners. (298) Other researchers have pointed out the difficulty vulnerable populations have had gaining access to covered mental health outpatient care, even when their physicians attempt a referral, so this finding is uncontroversial. Does it follow from a finding that low-income people and people of color experience unequal use of and benefit from a covered service, that the coverage is illegitimate and should be curtailed? The logic of this assertion would call into question the continued coverage of cardiac services. It might, rather, be wise to address the observed shortcomings in access to outpatient services for non-White and low-income patients and to seek the elimination of disparities here as elsewhere in the health finance and delivery system.
Third, the authors examine whether outpatient mental health treatment (as opposed to mental health treatment by primary physicians) is associated with a reduction in the rate of hospitalization for mental health services. They conclude that care from outpatient mental health providers does not reduce the rate of hospitalization for mental health care. (294) The authors here seem to argue that it would be unwise to “fix” the observed inequalities in access for the disadvantaged group, as the lack of association between outpatient mental health care and reduced hospitalization is weak. The authors, however, candidly acknowledge the limitations on using claims data to draw clinical conclusions, noting “unobservable heterogeneity of underlying health status” (294) and the possible “problem of unobserved severity.” (297) That being the case, it might be that the race and income disparities observed in access to outpatient mental health providers has carried though to other aspects of the mental health care system. For example, vulnerable low-income patients and patients of color might be unengaged in care, and therefore suffering with untreated mental health symptoms. Some employees or their dependents might be treated by the parallel public mental health system. It may be, in other words, that low-income people and people of color are poorly served by the mental health care system for reasons that have little to do with the efficacy of outpatient mental health care, notwithstanding their location in a university town.
The fragmentation of care for people with mental illness is an enormous public health and health finance problem. Much research needs to be done to approach the problem from all angles. The authors have done substantial work with an interesting set of claims data, and have creatively drawn links between patterns of usage and mental health outcomes. As can be said of many forms of mental health treatment, their analysis fails to address the core issues. But in such a difficult area of research, any advances are welcome.
October 13, 2010 at 10:42 am
Tags: Book Reviews, health care
Posted in: Book Reviews, Health Law, Law and Psychology, Symposium (Health Care Fragmentation)
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