Call your US Senators and Representative today and ask them to join other members of Congress in asking the US Departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services to issue further guidance about the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) and Representatives John Sullivan (R-OK) and Paul Tonko (D-NY) are distributing what’s called a “Dear Colleague” to other Senators and Representatives asking them to sign on to a letter requesting federal agencies to issue further guidance on scope of service, medical necessity criteria disclosure and non quantitative treatment limitations under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. This further guidance is critical because there are many gray areas in the interim rule that the departments issued last year that insurance companies are using to continue to deny access to needed mental health and addiction care. Some plans continue to provide discriminatory benefits. Other plans are excluding residential treatment for substance use and eating disorders. And some are applying pre-authorization requirements to mental health and substance use benefits not applied to medical benefits. There’s additional information below. WHAT YOU CAN DO: US Senate: Please call and ask your US Senators to sign the letter today! The deadline to sign on is today. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202.224.3121 and ask for your Senator’s office. (Click here for a list of US Senators.) To sign on to the letter, Senate staff may contact Hannah Katch at [email protected] in Sen. Franken’s office. Please do not contact Senator Franken’s office yourself, ask your Senator’s staff to get in touch with them. Thanks! U.S. House of Representatives: Please call and ask your US Representative to sign the letter today! The deadline to sign on in the House is Friday. Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202.224.3121 and ask for your Representative’s office. (Click here for a list of US Representatives). To sign on to the House letter, Congressional staff may contact Joseph Eaves in Rep. Tonko’s (D-NY) office ([email protected]) or Jon Oehmen in Rep Sullivan’s office (R-OK) ([email protected]). Please do not contact Rep. Tonko or Rep. Sullivan’s office yourself, ask your member of Congress’ staff to get in touch with them. Thanks! Thank you! More Background information: This additional guidance is being requested before plans make decisions on 2012 benefit packages in May or June of this year. Members of Congress are concerned that allowing the law to be implemented without specific guidance on scope of service, disclosure of medical criteria and non-quantitative treatment limitations is resulting in insurance plans offering limited behavioral health benefits in 2011. For copies of the letters, please email us at [email protected]. ________________________________________