A cynical strategy.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Most people understand that some heavy duty horse trading goes on as a legislative session winds down and lawmakers wheel and deal to line up votes for their pet projects. But Republican leaders in the Oregon House of Representatives ought to be ashamed of themselves for turning the state's mentally ill residents into political bargaining chips.

House Speaker Karen Minnis is making a serious mistake if she thinks voters equate health insurance parity for mentally ill Oregonians with her school funding plan or a Republican-backed capital gains tax cut. House Republican leaders need to abandon their cynical gambit to hold Senate Bill 1 hostage, because the hopes of thousands of beleaguered, financially-strapped families are hanging in the balance.

Senate Bill 1 is a long-overdue acknowledgement that mental health is as important as physical health, and that the stigmatizing disparity in insurance coverage for mental health must end. The bill requires Oregon insurers to cover mental illness and substance abuse the same way they cover physical ailments.

Thirty-five states require some form of parity between mental health and physical health coverage. That means they prohibit insurance companies from setting separate spending caps and hospitalization limits for mental conditions that don't apply to physical conditions.

Oregon law requires private health insurers to provide mental health coverage, but it allows them to set limits, such as capping the number of therapy sessions. Someone with chronic high blood pressure can seek treatment as needed, while someone with chronic depression may have treatment cut off after a set number of sessions.

Pay no attention to the industry lobbyists who claim parity will drive up insurance premiums and cause employers to drop health care coverage. That fear-mongering has effectively squashed every previous attempt at passing a parity bill in Oregon, but it simply isn't true.

The 10 states that have adopted comprehensive mental health parity have documented premium increases of less than 1 percent. More important, not one of those states has moved to reverse its law.

This is not a "feel-good" utopian health initiative. An estimated 22 percent of adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder every year. Mental illnesses such as bipolar disorder have a higher mortality rate than some forms of cancer. Suicides alone account for more annual deaths worldwide than homicide or war, according to the World Health Organization.

Common sense suggests that comprehensive mental health insurance stands a decent chance of reducing overall spending on mental illness because, as with physical illnesses, people would seek care early on rather than in an emergency room.

More important, seriously ill patients would not be forced to discontinue life-saving medication or treatment when they reached arbitrary caps in coverage.

It's not a partisan issue, either. Senate Bill 1 emerged as the top legislative priority of Gov. Ted Kulongoski's task force on mental illness, and it passed 24-5 in the Senate.

Oregonians need to let Speaker Minnis and House Republicans know that ending the state's cruel and discriminatory treatment of mental illness is more important than extracting a quid pro quo for other GOP initiatives. The speaker needs to release Senate Bill 1 for a full House vote immediately.