After more than a decade of struggle by hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals, Governor George Pataki signed Timothy’s Law in the Red Room of the Capitol on December 22, 2006. Those who witnessed this moment – including NAMI-NYS President Sherry Grenz, Sean Moran and myself – will never forget the feeling of relief and disbelief that after all these years, a health insurance parity law for persons with a mental illness will finally be enacted.
Linking the law with other health initiatives of his administration, such as the Healthy New York program, Governor Pataki called the law “an excellent, excellent proposal,” that was another step in ensuring that every New Yorker receives adequate health care.
Asked about the reaction of the business community to the law, he said most business groups had wanted him to approve it.
Governor Pataki’s praise for the law was echoed by Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno who said after careful study, the Governor had made “the final and right decision.”
“We all lost Timothy, not just his family and friends,” said Tom O’ Clair, the father of the boy who completed suicide after his mental health benefits ran out, for whom the law is named. “As Timothy was a gift to us, this law is a gift to New York.”
The law codifies a “floor” of 20 outpatient and 30 inpatient days of treatment for employee health insurance plans, regardless of the size of the company. It provides for full parity in coverage for biologically based mental illnesses in plans for employers with 50 or more employees, and a way to opt into such coverage for employers with fewer than 50 employees. While it is not everything we advocated for — it doesn’t cover chemical dependency, for example — the final version of the law is solid and a great starting point — a fitting attainment for a crusade that began in the ‘90s with NAMI-NYS members Muriel Shepherd, Roy Neville and Jerry Klein. See Agreement Reached on Timothy’s Law for a full description.)
The law’s enactment date is January 1, 2007, but the Governor recommended that it be pushed back by Legislature in order to give the state and the insurance industry enough time to prepare for its implementation. We now understand the new administration led by Governor Eliot Spitzer has decidednot to push back the enactment date, and the insurance industry is now "muddling through" in changing its policies, proceduresand rate structures to complywith the law. Those whose covered benefitsrun out in the interim should be reimbursed in the future.
The two weeks that led up to the signing of the law not only included an effort focused on the Governor, but an effort to bring the law to a vote in the Assembly and also a separate effort to stop the hurried passage of a bill to confine violent sexual predators in psychiatric facilities, for which the Governor had called a special session of the Legislature on December 13th.
On December 11th, NAMI-NYS was joined by representatives of the New York State Psychiatric Association, the New York State Association for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, the New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Service Providers, the New York State Psychological Association, the Coalition Against Sexual Assault, the Mental Health Association in New York State, and the New York State Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services in a press conference to warn the Legislature that the civil confinement bills it was going to consider would be very costly to implement, would not make New Yorkers safer, and would pervert how mental disorders are defined.
Speakers included Dr. Richard Hamill, President of the Alliance of Sex Offender Service Providers and Ed Amyot, M.D., Chairman of the Public Psychiatry Committee for the Psychiatric Association.
NAMI-NYS’s Bob Corliss said the civil confinement that was being proposed would be a resource-draining quagmire: “New York’s Iraq.”
Noting that the results haven’t come out yet from a recently concluded multi-agency assessment on how the state deals with sex offenders, Anne Liske of the Coalition Against Sexual Assault urged the Legislature to go slow and consider the research in order to create effective programs that will actually protect New Yorkers instead of “expensive quick fixes that look tough.”
During its special session on the 13th, the Legislature took no action on civil confinement. Negotiations had reached an impasse between the Senate and Assembly. We now hope the state will heed our advice and apply a more thoughtful approach to this issue. The best approach would be to appoint a nonpartisan commission to propose the best solutions as part of an effective, cost-effective and comprehensive strategy.
Being called back for the special session gave the Assembly the opportunity to consider other legislation as well and to pass the Senate version of Timothy’s Law, the version that was ultimately approved by the Governor. The Assembly approved it by a unanimous vote on the evening of December 13th. We have many people on both sides of the aisle to thank for this, including Assemblyman Paul Tonko, Speaker Sheldon Silver and the rest of the Assembly leadership.
In the following nine days, Timothy’s Law Campaign, organized an all-out push to reach Governor Pataki through phone calls, letters, faxes, emails and a vigil outside of his office. The members of NAMI-NYS certainly did their share. We were not at all certain of the outcome, however, because the Governor had already vetoed our other legislative priorities, the Special Housing Unit bill and the Community Housing Waiting List bill (see article below).
On both the violent sexual predator issue and Timonthy's Law, the mental health community united, and we had one of our “finest hours.” We came out victorious, but other battles still remain to be fought.
We now must fight to expand Timothy’s Law, so it will provide full parity for everyone – including parity for chemical dependency services –and to make sure the law is actuallyfully implemented, so its actual impact can be fully studied before it “sunsets” in 2009. Only when the law is made permanent will we be “home free.”
When Governor Pataki called the special session, we thought it was ironic that we would have to end 2006 the way we began it back in January: with a press conference on why civil confinement is such a bad idea. This time, we chose not to focus on the harm it could do the mental health system, but on why it was such a bad deal for New York’s taxpayers.
This issue is far from being resolved. We expect a new challenge to feature Governor Eliot Spitzer. During his first State of the State address the Governor said, “One New York means a state where parents do not have to worry about a sexual predator being released straight from prison back into their neighborhood. That is why we must finally enact civil commitment legislation.”
Those remarks were greeted with an ovation from the Legislature.
Again, we hope Governor Spitzer take a hard look at the costs of civil confinement and its actual benefits as experienced by other states. We also hope he’ll find better ways to protect our neighborhoods.
Onward and upward.
