Will he or won’t he?
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- December
- 14
   A day after the Assembly passed Timothy’s Law for mental-health parity in insurance coverage, Gov. George Pataki said he’ll have to study it before making a decision. The Democrat-led Assembly and GOP-controlled Senate cut a deal on the legislation in June, but they didn’t have time to pass it before leaving that month. This fall, the Senate approved the bill, which would require mental-health benefits to be on a par with those for physical ailments.
  “There’s two main elements. One is we extend coverage for mental-health services, which is positive. The second is it will have an impact on health-care rates and the ability of people, or the ability of employers or employees to actually have any health-care coverage at all,” the governor said today.
  “You have to weigh those two. We’re going to have to do an analysis of what people think the impact would be as to whether or not it’s going to increase the number of uninsured. I’ll make a decision once I have that input,” he said.
  Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, D-Manhattan, said he was surprised Pataki’s administration needed more time to study the legislation. He said the bill is not lengthy and wondered why “nobody on the second floor had a chance to read the bill” in the six months since the Legislature announced a compromise.
  Key points of the legislation, which will take effect Jan. 1 if passed, are that it would require insurance plans to allow a minimum of 20 outpatient visits and 30 inpatient days a year for mental-health treatment. The state would pick up the extra cost of expanded coverage for small businesses. Larger employers would have to provide a higher level of coverage.
  The bill is named for the late Timothy O’Clair of Schenectady, who took his own life in 2001 at age 12. His parents had to give up custody of him when their mental-health benefits ran out, so the state would pick up the cost of care.
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This entry was posted
on Thursday, December 14th, 2006 at 2:53 pm by Cara Matthews.
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