Coalition urges “no” vote on Shirkey bill to change mental health care for people on Medicaid

Mental wellbeing teams are urging state legislators to vote no on a psychological wellness care invoice. 

They say Republican Senate Vast majority Leader Mike Shirkey’s monthly bill would acquire desperately wanted mental wellbeing treatment absent from people today on Medicaid. 

The invoice would set insurance businesses like Blue Cross and HAP in demand of mental health treatment for people today on Medicaid, in its place of county-operate Local community Mental Wellness companies. 

Bob Sheehan heads the Neighborhood Psychological Wellbeing Association of Michigan. He claimed other states have carried out this — with devastating final results for individuals.

“They have experienced solutions slice from them,” he said. “Their obtain to treatment obtained even worse pretty much right away, and the service delivery community was remaining in shambles.”

Wellbeing coverage organizations support the invoice. 

Condition Senator Rosemary Bayer (D-Beverly Hills) stated Senator Shirkey did not allow opponents of his bill to testify just before it was passed out of his committee. 

Bayer mentioned the invoice would siphon $300 million from the Medicaid psychological health treatment funds in buy to go over administrative fees for the insurance coverage organizations, as properly as bettering their operating margins.

Roquesha O’Neil is a mental wellness advocate in Detroit. She mentioned county neighborhood psychological wellbeing organizations are on-the-ground specialists when it arrives to psychological wellbeing care for small revenue little ones and family members having difficulties with difficulties like gun violence, COVID-19, and PTSD.

She reported well being coverage organizations have no expertise delivering crisis and ongoing companies for the advanced acute and continual mental well being needs of numerous people with Medicaid insurance coverage.

“We need that invoice not to move,” she mentioned. “Because it truly is existence and death when it arrives to our group and our mental overall health.”

In a press launch, Shirkey said his bill, and a companion invoice, SB 598, would make psychological overall health treatment much more accessible. 

“Where you live really should not figure out entry to psychological wellbeing treatment, and mental overall health care, like all wellness care, have to mirror how individuals live their life,” the press release claimed. “Through this critical reform, psychological wellbeing treatment provided by the condition of Michigan will be portable and additional available, no issue wherever you connect with property.”

Senator Bayer said the monthly bill has been handed out of committee, but Shirkey does not have the votes nonetheless to provide it just before the comprehensive Residence. She mentioned many Democrats and some Republicans in the Senate do not assist the invoice.