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Bipartisan mental health bills move forward

Two freshman lawmakers who crossed party lines to collaborate on a military mental health screening bill that is about to become law are now working on their next joint venture.

Reps. Michael McMahon, D-N.Y., and Thomas Rooney, R-Fla., don’t see eye to eye on a lot of issues, but they teamed up in March to sponsor legislation requiring mandatory and confidential one-on-one mental health screening for all returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. They saw this as a response to the increasing rate of suicides and attempted suicides among service members.

“We cannot afford to keep losing the brave young men and women to suicide,” said McMahon, a former New York City Council member who serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and its Coast Guard subcommittee. McMahon said that in the Army alone, about 120 soldiers have killed themselves this year, a figure he called “frightening.”

Rooney, a former Army judge advocate who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said face-to-face mental health assessments are more likely to discover issues that might not be caught by the written assessments now used by returning troops.

“If there ever were an issue where there should be bipartisan backing, this is it,” Rooney said. “We have a lot of work to do. We are not completely where we want to be in making sure combat veterans get the help they need.”

“There is a lot of potential for us to work together,” said McMahon, noting that he has experience working on mental health issues and Rooney has experience serving in the military.

The two lawmakers, who really don’t have much in common, got together on the issue of mental health when Rooney walked in cold, without an appointment, asking to see McMahon because he had heard they were both working on similar legislation.

McMahon, who said he worked with Republicans on the New York City Council, didn’t see any reason not to work together. “It isn’t as if this is a Democrat or Republican issue,” he said. “It is in the interest of everyone to get this done.”

Under the provision to the 2010 defense authorization bill that they sponsored, the Defense Department has six months to set up mandatory mental health screening. The bill, HR 2647, received final approval from Congress on Thursday.

McMahon and Rooney continue to work together. Their new joint effort is a bill introduced Oct. 15 that would give Tricare beneficiaries direct access to mental health counseling without requiring a referral from a primary care doctor. For this bill, HR 1308, they include active-duty service members among Tricare beneficiaries even though most service members receive their medical care and counseling directly from military providers rather than from the private sector.

Rooney said turning to Tricare to help with mental health coverage has advantages in that the military doesn’t have all of the mental health professionals it needs and some service members may prefer to get help from nonmilitary sources, believing that would have less impact on their career.

But Rooney said Tricare rules are cumbersome and need to be changed to make this happen. In particular, Tricare requires referrals for mental health counselling and supervision of the counseling, restrictions that would be dropped under the bill.

Called the Counselor Accessibility Reform and Expansion for Soldiers Act, or CARES Act, the bill would allow anyone covered under Tricare to have the same access to mental health care professionals that many people covered under private insurance enjoy today. Rooney said this addresses another key issue in suicide preventiion — access to professional counselors.

“We cannot overstate the need for adequate, efficient mental health services for our men and women in the armed forces,” McMahon said.