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Our Views: Steps forward on mental health

The New Orleans Advocate - 1/7/2017

The record of legislative accomplishment last year on Capitol Hill is pretty spotty, but there are positive examples of leadership that transcend the partisan anger of 2016.

One is the passage of a major new bill on cancer treatment and research that also included a major overhaul of federal laws and regulations about the care of the mentally ill.

It was a bipartisan effort, but one that owed a lot to U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, a physician and a Republican lawmaker from Baton Rouge.

Cassidy teamed with a Democratic senator, Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, to try to corral votes for a new mental health bill in 2015. Ultimately, with the key backing of U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., the mental health proposals were folded into the larger 21st Century Cures Act last year.

That larger bill had focused on other health issues, but it also had bipartisan support: Many senators of both parties are fond of their longtime colleague, Vice President Joe Biden, whose son died young of cancer. Part of the bill was named after the late Beau Biden. President Barack Obama signed the combined measure into law at the end of the year.

But if the challenges of the mentally ill are not quite as politically salable as cancer treatment and research, each can touch millions of families. In an interview with The Advocate's editorial board, Cassidy modestly ascribed the passage of the measure to the fact that lawmakers and officials have seen how mental illness destroyed loved ones.

We believe that Cassidy and Murphy deserve more credit, as it is not easy to pass legislation with dozens of provisions affecting health care providers, consumer groups and other interested parties with legitimate concerns about the issues.

Some of the provisions of the mental health bill are organizational, giving treatment of illnesses of the mind greater prominence in federal agencies' decision-making processes. Other provisions give grants to states to promote treatment of both physical and mental illnesses in a more integrated way. Suicide prevention is also a key goal of the new measure.

Training for teachers, emergency responders and others to recognize the symptoms of mental illness is another important goal of the new measure.

Cassidy and Murphy are relatively junior senators. Alexander is one of the Senate's elder statesmen, and he acknowledged that passage of a bill like this one is only one step, and that monitoring of federal agencies' follow-up is critical to fulfill the promise of the bill - a cohesive health care system that can detect and deal with mental illness as smoothly as with physical ailments.

Oversight of the implementation of the new measure is important, but it is also pleasant to be able to recognize bipartisan and results-oriented leadership by Cassidy and Murphy.

Letters: Kudos to Sen. Bill Cassidy for mental health billThe 21st Century Cures Bill just passed into law contains a comprehensive mental health reform bill entitled "Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Reform Act."