May 25, 2006 - Candlelight Vigil for Timothy's Law in Hudson

Timothy’s Law on Senate’s plate again this session – Saland says impact on small business a concern
Hudson Register-Star June 3, 2006
By Kate Mostaccio

It’s been a little over five years since 12-year-old Timothy O’Clair took his own life on March 16, 2001, hanging himself in his bedroom closet just shy of his 13th birthday.

Timothy suffered from mental health ailments and his death has been “attributed to the discrimination that he faced at the hands of his parent’s insurance company,” according to the Timothy’s Law Web site.

Now, advocates of Timothy’s Law, a mental health parity bill which strives to bring equal insurance coverage for mental health to all insured people in New York state, are pushing for the New York state Senate to pass Timothy’s Law, which the state Assembly has already done.

But the Senate still has concerns about the law’s effects on employers.

State Sen. Stephen Saland said Thursday that there has been a Timothy’s Law bill in the Senate for a number of sessions, but that it has not been passed yet.

“It has been at a standstill for quite some time,” the senator said, touching on the reasons why it is cause for worry. “Primarily it (the Senate) is concerned with the impact on small businesses. There is considerable concern in many quarters that as you expand insurance requirements or mandates, employers who are providing insurance coverage to employees may opt to discontinue providing insurance.”

Saland said there is data to back up his concern.

“There is some data out there, studies, that validate that position,” he said. “What the Senate bill does is provide an exemption for small businesses with 50 or fewer employees or provides for an exemption where the resulting increase in premiums wouldn’t exceed 2 percent.”

He said the Assembly bill did not contain those exemptions.

“There is probably about 15 to 18 states that have either a combination of those two or one or the other of them,” he said of the exemptions. “The 2 percent number arrived at in the case of the Senate bill represented a number which was in large part viewed as a response to the disparity in the numbers between what the advocates claim would be the premium increase and what the insurance companies claim would be the increase.”

According to Saland, advocates of Timothy’s Law, who base their information on a Price Waterhouse study, claim that the premiums would increase by something like eight tenths on one percent.

County Mental Health Department Director Dr. Michael O’Leary, in a speech he gave during a rally in support of Timothy’s Law held in Hudson recently, equated the increase to “$1.26 per insured person per month.”

Saland pointed out that the Senate bill’s 2 percent is “more than double” what the advocates say the increase would be.

“Clearly everybody agrees on the critical importance of providing mental health parity and the Senate bill certainly would accomplish that, but I think the small business issue is most offensive to the advocates. It is certainly an effort to recognize that small businesses have a difficult enough challenge of surviving in a very competitive business world.”

He reiterated the need to deter small businesses from discontinuing health care coverage for their employees and how the Senate’s version of the bill would hopefully make that less likely.

Still, O’Leary and many others are stalwart supporters of getting a bill in place and he pointed out a different perspective for the business world to take into consideration.

“It’s ironic that a state which prides itself in being business friendly remains inactive in creating legislation that would bring relief to businesses in terms of loss of productivity that results from absenteeism and inefficiency on the job when the employee suffers from treatable disorders such as depression or alcoholism or when an employee’s family member suffers from those disorders,” O’Leary said at the rally. “The facts indicate that U.S. businesses lose $79 billion annually in productivity as a result of mental illness. Treatment works and can mitigate against this loss.”

He also urged people to remember there is no difference between mental health and just plain health.

“Health insurance should include treatment for mental illness and substance abuse using the same criteria as applies to other health related problems,” he stated. “The standard of medical necessity. Mental illness and chemical dependency are also health problems!”

Saland added that the Senate bill also provides a component which required an analysis to determine what the mental health coverage impact would be on insurance premiums.

For more information on Timothy’s Law, visit www.timothyslaw.org.