Saturday, September 23, 2006
Lawmakers push for better treatment of addiction
Jim Ramstad and Patrick Kennedy are starting another push for parity. The legislation has been introduced every year since 2001. In order to build enough support to pass, they drop the substance abuse provisions and limit the bill to mental health care. It has enough votes to pass, but House of Representatives leadership won't allow a vote. Hopefully the changes in house leadership will create an opening.
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2 comments:
Jason, Didn't Bush allocate federal money toward recovery programs?
Since taking office, Bush has indicated that he would sign a parity bill but hasn't invested any political capital in making it happen. For the last several years, there have been enough votes to pass the bill, but the congressional leadership would not allow a vote on the bill. The new leadership has indicated that there will be a vote on it, we'll see. It doesn't appear to be a high priority.
As far as funding goes. He's created a new program, Access to Recovery, but I don't think it created new treatment money. Right now the funding landscape has shifted pretty dramatically: http://www.jointogether.org/news/features/2007/bushs-budget-plan-cuts.html
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