How Kamala Harris will address the mental health crisis – POLITICO

What would the plan do?

The plan would double the number of treatment beds, address mental illness among vulnerable populations like veterans and minorities and focus on children affected by trauma.

The plan says little about how it would be funded, and it relies heavily on her earlier " Medicare for All"-style plan to expand access to mental health services.

Harris says her Medicare for All plan will provide direct access to mental health professionals without deductibles or copays, and it would expand access to telemedicine services, especially in rural areas. Her plan will ensure home or community-based comprehensive long-term services are available for patients who need them.

Mental health providers would also get a pay increase. The plan would eliminate the decades-old Medicaid restriction on funding care for patients staying at large mental health institutions.

Harris said she will prioritize mental health research, including more funding for studies examining how to treat PTSD, trauma and traumatic brain injuries among soldiers and veterans. She'll also focus on methods for reducing homelessness, incarceration and excessive emergency room visits among people with serious mental illness.

She also supports reclassifying schizophrenia and other serious mental illnesses as a neurological condition instead of a behavioral condition. The new designation would unlock more funding for research, advocates say.

It doesn't explain how Harris would pay for the robust proposal, which includes ideas that come with a hefty price tag. For example, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office previously estimated that repealing the ban on Medicaid payments for large mental health institutions would cost between $40 billion and $60 billion over a decade. Other ideas like increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates and expanding access to services and beefing up research funds would also be costly.

Pete Buttigieg rolled out a $300 billion plan to address mental health and addiction issues that focused on integrating behavioral health care into the primary care system, as well as investing in suicide prevention and reducing health disparities.

Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren have both proposed sweeping $100 billion plans to address the twin crises of addiction and mental health. Like Harriss plan, both Klobchar's plan and Warren's plan would repeal the Medicaid bar on funding for large psychiatric facilities. They also proposed addressing the high rates of incarceration among people with mental illnesses.

Former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland also released a mental health proposal that would increase access to services in schools and throughout the criminal justice system.

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How Kamala Harris will address the mental health crisis - POLITICO