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Substance Abuse Treatment Parity Legislation Introduced
On March 22, 2001, Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Congressman Jim Ramstad, (R-MN) were recently joined by Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and a biparisan group of members in both chambers, to take important first steps to ending the outdated U.S. drug policies of the 1990's by introducing legislation that would cover addiction treatment benefits in the same manner as all other medical and surgical conditions currently covered under private health plans.
To assist Affiliates, community groups and indvidual citizens in supporting the substance abuse parity legislation, National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence (NCADD) has developed the "Fairness in Treatment: Parity Treatment
Advocacy Kit." The Kit includes:
* New tool that allows users to enter their zip code in a search box, and the user's Senators and Representative are automatically looked-up. A
sample letter is provided as well as a blank page for you to compose your own letter, if you prefer, or use the provided sample letters.
* Information on adding the Congressional members search box to your
website is also in the Kit.
* Sample News Release
* Talking points: "Key Messages for the Media"
* Sample Letters to Senators and Representatives
* Parity Fact Sheet: "FYI: Fairness in Treatment"
* List of Online Treatment Parity Resources.
The Kit is available online at http://www.ncadd.org/programs/advocacy/paritykit.html.
Fairness in Recovery
Fact Sheet
The Need for Treatment
 | Untreated addiction costs America $400 billion
per year (Source: Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One Health
Problem, Brandeis University, Schneider Institute for Health Policy, 2001)| 23 million Americans suffer from substance abuse
addiction (Source: Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One Health
Problem, Brandeis University, Schneider Institute for Health Policy, 2001) | Untreated addiction is more expensive than 3 of
the nation’s top 10 killers: 6 times more expensive than America’s
number one killer: heart disease ($133.2 billion/year), 6 times more than
diabetes ($130 billion/year), 4 times more than cancer ($96.1billion/year) (Source:
Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One Health Problem, Brandeis
University, Schneider Institute for Health Policy, 2001) | Drug related deaths have almost doubled since
1990--approximately one in four deaths each year is attributable to
substance abuse. (Source: Substance Abuse: The Nation’s Number One
Health Problem, Brandeis University, Schneider Institute for Health
Policy, 2001) | More than half of all adults have a family
history of alcoholism or problem drinking. (Source: Position Paper on
Drug Policy, Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy (PLNDP), Brown
University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, 2000) | More than 9 million children live with a
parent dependent on alcohol and/or illicit drugs. (Source: Position Paper
on Drug Policy, Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy (PLNDP), Brown
University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, 2000) | Heavy drinking contributes to illness in each
of the top three causes of death: heart disease, cancer and stroke. (Source:
Position Paper on Drug Policy, Physician Leadership on National Drug Policy
(PLNDP), Brown University Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, 2000) | |
Social and Medical Barriers to Treatment
|
82%
of doctors admit that MD’s avoid addressing alcoholism in their
patients. (Source: The Road to Recovery: A Landmark National Study on
Public Perceptions of Alcoholism and Barriers to Treatment. Peter D.
Hart Research Associates, Inc. 1998.) Families need and want help: 72% of families
whose doctor has not intervened to arrest addiction say they would want the
doctor to do so. (Source: The Road to Recovery: A Landmark National Study
on Public Perceptions of Alcoholism and Barriers to Treatment. Peter
D. Hart Research Associates, Inc. 1998.) | A 58% majority of employers acknowledged that
managers avoid addressing alcoholism in their employees. (Source: The
Road to Recovery: A Landmark National Study on Public Perceptions of
Alcoholism and Barriers to Treatment. Peter D. Hart Research
Associates, Inc. 1998.) | 58% of clergy acknowledge that they avoid
addressing alcoholism among the individuals and families they counsel. (Source:
The Road to Recovery: A Landmark National Study on Public Perceptions of
Alcoholism and Barriers to Treatment. Peter D. Hart Research
Associates, Inc. 1998.) | |
Treatment Works:
| Treatment of addiction is as successful as
treatment of other chronic diseases, diabetes, hypertension and asthma (Source:
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment,
1999)| Drug treatment reduces drug use by 40-60%. (Source:
National Institute on Drug Abuse, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment,
1999) | One year of methadone treatment costs $4700 per
patient—one year of imprisonment is $18,400. (Source: National
Institute on Drug Abuse, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, 1999) | For every $1 spent on treatment yields a return
of up to $7 in a reduction of drug related crime and criminal justice
costs. (Source: National Institute on Drug Abuse, Principles of
Drug Addiction Treatment, 1999) | When adding savings related to health care, the savings
exceed costs by a ratio of 12:1. (Source: National Institute on Drug
Abuse, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, 1999) | No differences in success of treatment
between genders, age or ethnicity. (Source: National Institute on Drug
Abuse, Principles of Drug Addiction Treatment, 1999) | The majority of employee managers (83%) believe
its better for a company’s bottom-line to help employees recover from
addiction than it is to terminate them for alcohol-related incidents. (Source:
The Road to Recovery: A Landmark National Study on Public Perceptions of
Alcoholism and Barriers to Treatment. Peter D. Hart Research
Associates, Inc. 1998.) | Treatment saves money: A Chevron Corporation
analysis indicated that $10 is saved for every $1 spent on employee
rehabilitation (figure does not include savings for reduction in workplace
accidents as a result of employee rehabilitation) (Source:
Chevron Corporation, Testimony on Workplace Substance-Abuse Prevention
Programs before the Subcommittee on National Security, International Affairs
and Criminal Justice of the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight,
U.S. House of Representatives, June 1996). | Treatment Works: According to American Airlines,
75% to 80% of employees who received alcohol and other drug treatment
had remained abstinent from substances through the entirety of the one-year
monitoring activities. (Source: John Saylor, Manager of
Employee Assistance Programs for AMR Corporation and for American Airlines,
AMR’s largest subsidiary, July 28, 1998 testimony before the Senate Labor
and Human Resources Committee.) | The largest study to date on the benefits of
substance abuse treatment was conducted by the University of Chicago’s
National Opinion Research Center and Lewin-VHI of Fairfax, Virginia for the State
of California Health and Welfare Agency’s Department of Drug and Alcohol
Programs in 1994.
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| 5 states with parity in their health plans
(California, Ohio, Oregon, Minnesota and Washington) found that costs
associated with substance abuse benefits tend to have little impact on
premiums or the overall spending of insurance companies and that the initial
costs are offset by the resultant social benefits of treatment (The
Center for Substance Abuse Treatment’s Office of Managed Care and the
Center for Mental Health Services) |
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