Tucson Weekly: Head Job (February 26

Healthcare And Insurance Companies Should Be Forced To Cover Mental Disorders, Too.
By Jeff Smith
GOT A PIECE of mail the other day and nearly chucked it in the woodstove. It came in a white envelope with a cellophane window, a Post Office box but no name in the return address space, metered postage and nothing but my rural route number in the address window. Didn't even claim to know me as Occupant.
Smith It looked like your standard junk mail. Could this be the chance I'd been praying for to buy term life to pay off my mortgage in the event of my untimely demise? I just don't know if my soul could rest, knowing Chase Manhattan was stuck holding my marker for 40 grand.
As cold and rainy as El Niño has made it these past few weeks, I could have used the BTUs more than whatever offer the envelope contained, but rather than incinerate it I opened the letter and saw it wasn't junk mail after all, but a bill from my shrink.
This being the first such missive I have received, it surprised, then amused me somewhat. The closest thing to porn I've ever found in my mailbox was a Victoria's Secret catalog, so I'm not accustomed to the plain brown wrapper routine. Maureen and Jackie at the Post Office already know that my tastes in literature run to gun and motorcycle magazines. I've got nothing to hide and no way to do it if I did, so how come Palo Verde Behavioral Health feels the need to be coy about our professional relationship?
I guess even the docs themselves are somewhat stigmatized by the spectre of lunacy.
So I was pleased to read that same day that Herschella Horton finally has succeeded in getting her bill a wider hearing before the Arizona Legislature. Who hears a Horton? It was the House Banking and Insurance Committee last week, reporting about HB2580--which would force insurers to pay for healthcare of the mental variety--by a bare 5-4. But after five years of trying and running into walls, the District 14 Democrat is tickled. "This is a time for celebration, after all the years and all the tears and all the heartaches for the families," Horton said.
We'll see if the festive spirit continues when the bill is heard by other committees, on its hopeful path to the floor of the Legislature as a whole. I suspect it will be another year, another legislative session before it gets that far.
Why? Two reasons:
One, the insurance industry is in it for the money, and money not spent covering claims for mental and emotional healthcare is cash in the bank, and;
Two, society at-large--and the Arizona Legislature as a sampling of society's mentality at-small--still tend to regard afflictions of that portion of the anatomy above the neck as shameful, sinful, embarrassing, unmanly, and somehow self-induced if not outright, shall we say, imaginary. (Them imaginations are only in your head.) Which is how come many insurance carriers have for so long been able to get away without covering mental health.
Not all of them take this medieval tack, but enough to warrant concern, and it's in small group health plans, or individual policies where benefits already are marginal, and premiums high-priced, that most offenses are found. Horton's bill simply would require insurance companies to provide the same coverage for mental disorders and substance abuse that they do for physical illness.
Of course "simply" ain't always simple. It's simple to point out that mental illness really is physical illness, since your head is a physical part of your package and chemical imbalances up there make you bummed or crazy the same way toxins in your tummy make you barf or bad stuff in your bloodstream makes you dead.
Yeah, but it ain't like a broke leg, say Arizona's lawmakers, nor do they want to encourage dope smokers and such by getting them help to kick it. Never mind that most state legislatures are among the most notorious bunches of drunks outside of Shriners' conventions.
We've got to get off this moronic mind-set or we're only going to get more mental than we already are. Which is a lot.
I myownself am a proud investor in a nifty little product called Zoloft. I don't know what its generic name or chemical formula is, but I know that after years of watching my mood sort of slide into the mud, and trying the old New England Puritan family formula of booting myself in the butt, I studied up on the chemical component of clinical depression and decided to see my doc about it. She said take half of one of these every morning and call me in a couple of weeks.
I called back and said I didn't feel like fragging myself, but I wasn't exactly euphoric either. She said take a whole one and call back later.
I called back and said I was feeling more chipper, except for the diarrhea. She said knock it off and we'll try Paxil. The thin dirties persisted, plus I was lazy and shiftless. We went back to Zoloft and more psylium fiber and eventually things leveled off and firmed up. I'm much better now.
The point is, that after taking a couple of 100-mile-an-hour hits in the head, a pair of cerebral hemorrhages, a divorce, half a hundred birthdays and way too much chocolate and caffeine, my body and brain chemistry had got out of whack. I could feel the blues coming on like a freight train full of bad drugs, running through my veins straight to the brain. Those of you with any experience with recreational hypodermics will know what I mean.
There's only so much even a Ralph Waldo Emerson can accomplish by himself in the face of such demons. Or should have to. Or want to.
It's not your fault that the air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink and the experiences you live conspire to change the
chemical makeup and balance of your body and brain. You shouldn't feel ashamed, and nobody else should dis you for it.
Get help. Get better. Get on Herschella Horton's bandwagon and get on the Legislature's ass to get on the insurance industry's ass to treat your head as compassionately as they treat your butt when your hemorrhoids act up.

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