Joe Kennedy: Trumpcare Is a Historic Attack on Mental Health Care
Democratic Representative Joe Kennedy III Discusses the Republican Health Care Bill
A woman recently walked into my Massachusetts office to talk about her daughter, who had been diagnosed with serious mental illness in 2007, when she was just 4 years old.
A decade later, the stories this mother shared with me are heartbreaking. The countless hospital visits. The fights with insurers and doctors and courts. The time her daughter was kept for 21Â straight days in the emergency room as her family desperately searched up and down the East Coast for a single available treatment bed. The ache of watching the person you love most in the world struggle against a merciless disease.
This mother ended our conversation by looking me in the eye and saying, without a hint of bitterness or anger, “But we’ve been lucky. Compared to other people I know, we’ve been lucky.â€
If this is luck in the American mental health system, all of us should be ashamed. With 1Â in 5Â of our neighbors suffering from mental illness, the time for tinkering around the margins of our broken system is over. American families and communities need deep and dramatic reform.
Instead, congressional Republicans are moving forward with efforts to make it harder and more costly for the average American to access mental health care. These efforts began last month, with a hastily drafted bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Although it thankfully failed to get the support it needed to secure a vote in Congress, its message to the mental health community was clear: be warned. The legislation, championed by President Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan, was the single largest attack on mental health care in recent history.
By removing guaranteed behavioral health coverage for those covered under Medicaid expansion, millions of people would have lost access to treatment for substance use disorders — in the midst of an opioid epidemic. By capping Medicaid spending for states, Trumpcare would have imperiled the largest insurer of mental health services in our country. The bill did nothing to address abysmal reimbursement rates for mental health providers. Nothing to infuse investment into the full continuum of care. And nothing to force insurance companies to stop skirting parity laws that require they treat mental illness as they do physical health.
Enough Americans spoke out against that dangerous bill that we were able to stop it in its tracks. But almost immediately, Republicans were back behind closed doors trying to revive it. Their second bill could soon see a vote on the House floor.
Unbelievably, it’s an even starker blow to those suffering from mental illness than its predecessor. The latest version of Trumpcare doesn’t just threaten access to behavioral health coverage for those on Medicaid, it threatens access to behavioral health coverage for everyone. Under the guise of flexibility, this bill would allow states and insurance companies to opt out of covering mental health care — not to mention other designated essential health benefits like maternity and emergency care. Premiums and deductibles would soar as a result. Any semblance of mental health parity would be extinguished. And current protections for those with preexisting conditions — which is particularly important when it comes to mental illness — would cease to exist.
This is not the debate Congress should be having during a mental health care crisis. We should be considering steps to vastly expand the transformative mental health reforms made by the ACA, not shrink them. It’s time to go even further.
We need deep investments across the entire continuum of care to connect patients with treatment before they reach crisis points. We need broader support for community health centers, which provide essential entry points for lower and middle-income Americans who struggle to find in-roads to our mental health system. We need increased Medicaid reimbursement rates to encourage a new generation of workers to pursue careers in the mental health field, dramatically increasing access in every community that needs it. And we need relentless enforcement of mental health parity to make insurers live up to the laws of this country, which already demand basic equity in the coverage and treatment of mental illness.
All too often, mental illness is relegated to the sidelines of our health care debates. It’s somehow still deemed less critical, less acute, less wholly devastating than physical disease. One in five Americans and the families who love them would tell you otherwise. From the depths of opioid addiction to the searing pain of eating disorders and the long, often lonely, road through anxiety and depression, we have abandoned too many people in a system that cannot meet their basic needs.
The 40 million Americans suffering from mental illness deserve better than the paltry “luck†of that young mother in my office. They deserve better than a health care bill that degrades them. They deserve a country that is there for them, without question or condition, in their time of deepest need.
Joe Kennedy III has served as the US representative for Massachusetts’s 4th Congressional District since 2013.
This article originally appeared in STAT and is republished here with Congressman Kennedy’s permission.
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Image by Lorianne DiSabato via Flickr and a CC license
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The White House has confirmed President Donald Trump is moving to push the controversial SAVE America Act further right — which could make it even easier for the left to reject.
Many were confused or critical when President Trump claimed on Thursday that the SAVE Act — a voter ID bill that critics say will disenfranchise millions of Americans — would reshape rules for sports participation and health care access for transgender people, which the current text of the bill does not actually do.
According to Trump’s Truth Social post, the bill requires voter ID and proof of citizenship to vote, and no mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military, or travel. It also bans “men in women’s sports,” and “transgender mutilation surgery for children, without the express written approval of the parents.”
The president, after uproar from the right, dropped the parental approval portion and called to ban all transgender surgery for children.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Friday about Trump’s additions to the legislation.
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After declaring that he wants the SAVE Act passed “as soon as possible,” Leavitt acknowledged that Trump “has added on some priorities” to the bill in recent days, “namely no transgender transition surgeries for minors. We are not gonna tolerate the mutilation of young children in this country. No men in women’s sports. The president putting all of these priorities together, it speaks to how common sense they are.”
“These are all common sense priorities of this president that are backed by the vast majority of Americans and he wants Republicans to act on them as quickly as possible,” she claimed.
According to Democracy Docket, Leavitt’s comments “mark the first time the White House has publicly confirmed that Trump is pushing to attach anti-transgender policies to the SAVE America Act.”
Noting that even if the Senate were to pass the legislation with Trump’s latest priorities in it, the bill would have to head back to the House, Democracy Docket reported, “for another vote — a potentially difficult hurdle given the narrow margin by which it passed initially.”
But, even “without those additions, the bill faces long odds in the Senate, where most legislation requires 60 votes to pass and where Democrats have vowed to block it.”
Republican Majority Leader John Thune has said he opposes changing the Senate’s filibuster rules to help the bill’s passage.
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump and his administration are under fire for what critics say is a lack of planning for his war against Iran. The fallout is already being felt in the economy, from rising gas prices to sinking financial markets, and a myriad of other potential crises.
“I’ve seen a lot of Presidents fall short of their promises but I’ve never seen any President just doing the opposite of everything promised on purpose,” charged U.S. Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI). “Prices, Epstein, wars. Just absolutely racing to betray his voters.”
One hour later, he followed up, writing: “Did they think this through?”
The Atlantic’s Karim Sadjadpour earlier this week reported, “I have spoken with current and former U.S. officials privy to the decision making” on Iran, “who describe a total lack of planning and contradictory aims among those worried about the war effort and those more concerned about the war’s domestic political implications.”
Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chairman Ken Martin earlier in the week charged: “Trump and his incompetent administration had no plan to get Americans out of danger after their planned attack on Iran. Now, American citizens are stuck in an active war zone. This is a complete disaster.”
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On Friday, the State Department said that 24,000 Americans had returned from the Middle East, but thousands more remain. The “vast majority” of those who returned “were able to make their way home on their own through commercial means,” the Associated Press reported.
The rapidly rising price of oil and gas, and access to them, appear to be among critics’ greatest concerns.
“Apparently no one in the White House thought starting a war in the Middle East might affect oil prices,” lamented U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ). “Now families are paying the price at the pump for pure amateur hour.”
Longtime journalist Jim Roberts delved even further.
“Listening to White House official Kevin Hassett this morning is making it crystal clear that the Trump administration had no plan for dealing with the disruption of energy supplies in the Mideast,” he wrote, adding: “And now the Pentagon is trying to figure out how to protect ships in the Strait of Hormuz.”
The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson warned, “By April, energy experts say, the Iran War could be a full blown energy crisis.”
Citing reporting from the Financial Times, macroeconomist Philip Pilkington wrote that the “Trump administration forgot to refill its Strategic Petroleum Reserve before launching Total War in the Middle East.”
Patrick De Haan, the widely cited head of Petroleum Analysis at Gas Buddy, referencing President Donald Trump’s remarks about the price of gas rising, warned: “it doesn’t appear the admin is yet aware there’s actually a problem, so that means there’s nothing yet to fix. I do hope this changes soon.”
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Image via Reuters
Washington Post readers are pushing back against the paper and an op-ed that laments what its author sees as a shortage of evangelical Christians in the “halls of power.”
“Evangelicals are 23 percent of U.S. adults and one of the most loyal Republican voting blocs, with 81 percent backing Donald Trump in 2024,” writes author Aaron M. Renn. “Yet despite six of the nine Supreme Court justices being appointed by Republican presidents, there are no evangelicals on the Supreme Court.”
The Supreme Court “is just one of the many elite institutions in which evangelicals are absent or underrepresented,” he continues. Declaring that evangelicals “have excelled in politics,” he points to U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and House Speaker Mike Johnson as examples.
Arguing that evangelicals “are also prominent in well-run and profitable businesses with relatively low cultural impact, such as food processing (Tyson Foods) and retail (Hobby Lobby),” he says that “they are all but absent from the leadership of prestigious universities, major foundations, Big Tech companies, leading financial firms and large media companies.”
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“A stronger evangelical presence in elite institutions could strengthen them while addressing polarization and public mistrust,” he continues. “The lack of evangelicals in the halls of power contributes to anti-institutional public sentiment. It also deprives those institutions of an important pool of talent.”
Washington Post readers scorched the op-ed and the paper.
“The author remarked, more than once, of the lack of formal education among the vast numbers of evangelicals,” wrote one reader. “He then questions the lack of said evangelicals on corporate and college boards and in executive offices. Am I the only one seeing a connection here?”
“Is this not a request for a new DEI program to benefit evangelicals?” asked a reader.
“I am an evangelical Christian,” said a critic. “Please don’t hold up Mike Johnson or Josh Hawley as an example of what Christ calls us to be. Perhaps the reason for our absence in the halls of power is the fact that the majority chose to elect an amoral, corrupt narcissist to be president. We should be absent from that depth of depravity.”
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One reader encouraged the author to “go see the musical Godspell and see just how far off the mark the American Evangelicals are.”
“Since when did adherence to fundamentalist religious beliefs become a litmus test for government or institutional leadership?” asked a reader. “Aren’t we currently bombing a country based on that system? This ‘newspaper’ is devolving into an internet forum.”
“So now MAGA wants DEI for Evangelicals,” said one reader. “This is fantastic stand-up comedy material.”
“In some cases, not all, the author is confusing evangelical with fundamentalist,” wrote one critic. “The author is also narrowing the meaning of evangelical by using a political frame, not a theological frame. Many evangelicals define themselves via strict adherence to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (or the Plain) … I wish the author had explored at least modestly the increasing breadth of what the designation ‘evangelical’ represents in Christianity, not on Capital Hill.”
“Do you expect to be trusted in fields of science when you deny evolution?” asked a reader.
“Evangelical Christianity is the antithesis of intellectual pursuit, science, and progress,” wrote a reader.
And one critic, appearing to refer to “The Handmaid’s Tale,” charged: “Dreaming of Gilead, are you?”
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Image via Reuters
‘Dreaming of Gilead?’ WaPo Hit for Op-Ed Mourning Lack of Evangelicals in ‘Halls of Power’
‘Pure Amateur Hour’: Trump Slammed for ‘Absolutely Racing to Betray His Voters’
‘Flashing Red’: Jobs Report Sparks Expert Warnings of Recession — or Even Stagflation
White House Confirms Trump’s Shift That Pushes SAVE Act Further Right
White House Confirms Trump’s Shift That Pushes SAVE Act Further Right
‘Pure Amateur Hour’: Trump Slammed for ‘Absolutely Racing to Betray His Voters’
‘Dreaming of Gilead?’ WaPo Hit for Op-Ed Mourning Lack of Evangelicals in ‘Halls of Power’
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