Mental Healthcare Legislative Results

What passed?

Another Iowa legislative season has ended, and mental healthcare advocates are celebrating several critical bills that passed and now await Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signature:

House File 2673 is a proposed redesign of the state-wide mental health and substance use treatment systems, and will combine the current thirteen mental health and disability services regions and nineteen substance use treatment areas into seven “Behavioral Health Districts.” This redesign, in a nutshell, will simplify a previously confusing and convoluted system.

The new legislation also creates a state behavioral health plan for the first time. The final version of the bill includes:

• Adding children’s mental health experts to advisory boards and the development process for the state behavioral health plan

• Adding organizations that represent people with lived experiences to advisory boards and the development process for the state behavioral health plan

• Sustainable funding for the 988 suicide and mental health crisis line (This is a big one I’ve covered in previous columns here and here.)

House File 626 will prevent insurance companies from switching a patient’s prescription medications for non-medical reasons. Currently, an insurance company can cease to cover someone’s medication in the middle of a plan year if a similar medication becomes available at a cheaper price, even if the patient and their physician agree that the patient is stable and responding well to the original medication. But as the medical community and advocates know, even subtle changes to psychiatric medications can have serious impacts on a person’s mental health.

Mental healthcare advocates have been fighting for this one since I started lobbying back in 2018, and FINALLY got a win for it after six years.

House File 2397 will require reimbursement for ambulance transport to mental health access centers, similar to the way ambulance services are reimbursed to take people to hospital emergency rooms.

House File 2421 will allow individuals experiencing a mental health crisis to safely and temporarily store their firearms at a licensed gun shop and shield the gun shop from liability. This critical piece of legislation has the potential to prevent suicide.

Senate File 345 will increase funding for specialty drug courts.

House File 2402 will increase reimbursements for Psychiatric Medical Institutions for Children (PMICs), and creates a system to develop specialized PMIC settings for children with complex needs, including problematic sexualized behaviors, a history of aggressive behavior, or a diagnosis of intellectual or developmental disability.

Critical mental healthcare bill already signed by Gov. Reynolds:

Postpartum Medicaid Expansion that extends Medicaid coverage to women from 60 days to 12 months after a woman gives birth. A huge win as Iowa had one of the shortest coverage durations of any state in the nation. And personally as someone who twice suffered from post-partum depression, the previous 60 day coverage was deplorable. (Though it’s important to note this bill also includes a significant decrease in the income eligibility level for qualifying women, dropping the eligibility from 375% of the Federal Poverty Level to 215%. One step forward, two steps back . . . )

Amid the major wins this year, there is, of course, still work to be done. Now we must turn our focus to the November elections.

From the NAMI website last week:

NAMI is relaunching its #Vote4MentalHealth campaign for the 2024 elections. This nonpartisan campaign is part of NAMI’s long-standing efforts to help people across the country understand the impact that voting has on mental health care and find the resources and information they need to cast their ballot. NAMI is nonpartisan and does not take positions on candidates for office or political parties. The #Vote4MentalHealth campaign focuses on the powerful idea that everyone should understand how their vote matters: the people we elect at all levels of government will make decisions that impact what mental health services and supports are available in our communities.

NAMI urges voters to take the pledge to #Vote4MentalHealth, which is a commitment to do one thing: understand how your vote impacts mental health. After taking the pledge, people can learn about the issues, share why they #Vote4MentalHealth, register to vote or update their registration, request an absentee ballot, find their polling place and more — all at vote4mentalhealth.org.

See you at the polls in November. ~

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