All About Being

The other night at a CHADD meeting we had a guest who was very angry and very depressed. She was ADD and had depression but was unable to get treatment. Her healthcare provider Kaiser-Permanente would not give her any treatment. Apparently they do not have any doctors knowledgeable about ADD, and are not particularly concerned about it either. She said that two of the offices even threatened to report her for harassment because she was so persistent in trying to get help. Gee that’s nice isn’t it.

Another lady in the group says that her insurance company still separates mental health from "regular" healthcare and so she is rarely ever to get coverage for her child’s treatment. It’s difficult to believe that some companies are so behind the curve on this but I guess as long as they can avoid covering things they will. That’s really lame.

<sidebar> See Senate bill 558 the mental health parity act. Ask your congresspeople to support it. Also see these other mental health bills up before the current congress.

 A Quote From Chadd:
U.S. Senate Unanimously Approves Parity!!
On September 18, The U.S. Senate unanimously approved the Mental Health Parity Act of 2007 (S. 558).

I’ve had major challenges with Blue Cross of California getting insurance coverage. Since I take 2 meds for ADD I knew that no insurance company would want me. (I’m self employed and so I’m left to fight the insurance companies on my own.) I applied for a plan with no prescription coverage and I was denied because I took prescriptions! How the hell can they get away with that? They won’t cover prescriptions but they deny me because I take them. What a crock of shit!

Eventually I was able to get coverage under HIPAA (which also covered meds), but the cost was 6x higher! When I went to get my first prescription filled I was shocked at the high amount that I still had to pay. When I called blue cross about it I found out that they’d conveniently changed the terms of  my plan so that basically they would only pay for generics and I have to pay the bulk of the costs for brand names. That was a total bait and switch. They mailed me the changes to the plan after I’d already purchased it. What a bunch of crooks. The prescription was $199. I paid $155 and blue cross paid $45. Gee I sure am glad that I’m paying them $457 a month for insurance! Great coverage. Basically if you don’t get coverage through an employer you’re screwed.

Which brings me back to the lady I was talking about at the beginning. Even though she has insurance through COBRA it doesn’t pay crap and they won’t give her any treatment or therapy. She’s not "poor enough" to get assistance from the state or county healthcare so she’s caught in the middle and not getting any treatment.

To rub salt in her wounds…apparently she was fired from her last job because of her ADD. Attorneys have all agreed that she was discriminated against and that she has a case for a lawsuit, but none of them will take the case because there’s not enough money in it for them. So her basic point of the evening is that unless you’re wealthy and can afford to pay a psychiatrist out of your own pocket you can’t get treatment. And even if a company blatantly breaks the law and discriminates against you, there’s no one to hold them accountable.

The bottom line is that living with ADD and depression is bad enough without having to deal with this crap. Please contact your congresspeople about fixing this horrible situation. (Healthcare in general and especially mental healthcare.) Hopefully we’re reaching critical mass here and some much needed changes will be coming soon.

At least sign this petition and demand change.

Join CHADD and help the fight to end the discrimination against those of us with ADHD.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 26th, 2007 at 3:28 pm and is filed under Healthcare, Attention Deficit Disorder. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.