Dealing With Addiction

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Toward greater availability of treatment

 

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Dealing With Addiction

Toward greater availability of treatment

 

Theresa Dove-WatersTheresa Dove-Waters awoke one morning to a nightmarish surprise that no parent should have to endure: her teenage son Jeff, a gifted athlete, was telling her that he was drug addicted.

She found a long-term residential treatment program that seemed ideal for him; and she was relieved, at least for the moment, that he could get the help he needed without compromising his future. But Dove-Waters, then the director of minority affairs at Milledgeville College and State University, learned that her health insurance wouldn’t cover the program’s $30,000 cost.

Instead, Jeff was admitted to a 30-day program on an emergency basis. When he got out, he fell back into his old habits, and he subsequently spent years in and out of treatment before finally overcoming his addictions.

Jeff eventually graduated from college and entered the ministry. But “if I could have afforded the first program, we might have saved years of heartache,” Dove-Waters said.

The passage this year of the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act ensures that more people seeking treatment for drug or alcohol abuse will get the help they need. UGA’s Paul Roman calls the act “revolutionary” because it mandates equity in financial requirements. Before the Wellstone Act, federal law allowed insurers to set higher copayments or impose stricter limits on mental-health benefits.

Under the new legislation, most group health plans will have to provide coverage for treating mental illnesses—under which alcohol and drug abuse are grouped—that is comparable to what they offer for physical illnesses.

The Wellstone Act doesn’t require that all plans offer mental-illness coverage; it applies only to plans that have already chosen to do so. But as far as Roman is concerned, the Wellstone Act is a great beginning. “It should be a boon for increased availability of substance-abuse treatment,” he said.

—Rebecca McCarthy


 

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