Our Health Policy Matters

Where our nation's mental health is concerned, disparity, not parity, rules. Mental Health America released a new report today.  It's entitled Parity or Disparity: The State of Mental Health in America, 2015 .  The report offers the first cumulative ranking of mental health status and access to services for all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Source:  Data from www.mhascreening.org The report includes measures of mental health status and access for adults and children, drawn from national databases that are regularly updated.  Altogether, they paint a very interesting picture of how states measure up to one another in protecting the mental health of their people. The best states for your mental health?  Massachusetts leads the list, followed by Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, and Delaware.  Rounding out the top ten are Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Nebraska. There are traditionally liberal and traditionally conserva...

Where our nation's mental health is concerned, disparity, not parity, rules. Mental Health America released a new report today.  It's entitled Parity or Disparity: The State of Mental Health in America, 2015 .  The report offers the first cumulative ranking of mental health status and access to services for all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Source:  Data from www.mhascreening.org The report includes measures of mental health status and access for adults and children, drawn from national databases that are regularly updated.  Altogether, they paint a very interesting picture of how states measure up to one another in protecting the mental health of their people. The best states for your mental health?  Massachusetts leads the list, followed by Vermont, Maine, North Dakota, and Delaware.  Rounding out the top ten are Minnesota, Maryland, New Jersey, South Dakota, and Nebraska. There are traditionally liberal and traditionally conserva...

It has been a busy health policy year.  Here are my choices for the top health policy stories.  They all may not have made big headlines, but all will reverberate for some time.  The Slowing of Healthcare Inflation This was on my watch list coming into this year , and I’ll lead with it today because it was the best health policy news of the year.  When healthcare inflation came in low this year, it did all sorts of good things.  It helped balance state budgets, extended the life of the Medicare Trust Fund, and dropped the price tag of the Affordable Care Act.  Inflation is supposed to jump up this year as millions more become insured, but we can at least hope that a more modest trendline continues. Mental Health Parity And for some more good news… It took five years and incessant lobbying from heroes like Patrick Kennedy, but the final rule implementing the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008 was finally released this year , coinciding roug...

It has been a busy health policy year.  Here are my choices for the top health policy stories.  They all may not have made big headlines, but all will reverberate for some time.  The Slowing of Healthcare Inflation This was on my watch list coming into this year , and I’ll lead with it today because it was the best health policy news of the year.  When healthcare inflation came in low this year, it did all sorts of good things.  It helped balance state budgets, extended the life of the Medicare Trust Fund, and dropped the price tag of the Affordable Care Act.  Inflation is supposed to jump up this year as millions more become insured, but we can at least hope that a more modest trendline continues. Mental Health Parity And for some more good news… It took five years and incessant lobbying from heroes like Patrick Kennedy, but the final rule implementing the Mental Health Parity Act of 2008 was finally released this year , coinciding roug...