Work to be done before Session ends Sine Die April 4th
H.B. 1013 Mental Health Reform Innovation Commission, Recommendations, by HouseSpeaker David Ralston passed the House 169-3 on March 8th. Its 77 pages authorize local and state health officials to screen the mental health of pupils and students. Certain disorders would be reported to and controlled by the World Health Organization.
Medicaid services and private health insurance companies would be expanded and adjusted to comply with government standards that expect “politically correct” answers to mental health screening questions. Job descriptions of law enforcement officers would include on-the-job, in-the-field diagnosis of mental illness and incarceration of individuals they deem to be at risk of future psychiatric problems, whether or not they commit a crime. The bill words it this way:
H.B. 1013, lines 25-28: “to authorize inpatient civil commitment for mental illness to aid a person at risk of significant psychiatric deterioration in the near future; a peace officer to take custody of a person in apparent mental health crisis and transport the person to an evaluation facility notwithstanding the absence of evidence that the person has committed a criminal offense.”
During its debate on the House floor, a concerned Representative asked two questions: (a) How much will the insurance cost, i.e. Medicaid, Medicare or private policies? (b) What are the dangers of medical bureaucrats’ making mental health decisions about gender dysphoria? After reminding his peers that (c) conservativism is already viewed as a mental condition, he ended his remarks with these words, (d) “This bill does not make us more free.”
H.B. 1013 requires the following massive new network to control mental health for Georgians: (a) a Behavioral Health Care Workforce Data Base, (b) an assisted outpatient treatment unit, (c) an advisory council, (d) a grant program for accountability courts, (e) a task force to keep people with serious1 mental illness out of jail and detention facilities, (f) a state network of local co-response teams, and (g) a task force to improve Medicaid function and adequacy.
Further requirements: (1) compliance with federal mental health parity2 law and annual reviews; (2) information repositories; (3) Medicaid plan changes; (4) service cancelable loans for participant professionals; (5) rules and regulations; (6) inpatient civil commitment for persons deemed at risk of significant psychiatric decline in the near future3; (7) powers and duties of a Health Strategy and Coordination Office; (8) direct to mental health money that now goes into the County Drug Abuse Treatment and Education Fund; (9) the Behavioral Health Reform & Innovation Commission sunset date would be extended; and (10) for other purposes.
ACTION – OPPOSE. The Senate H & HS subcommittee has had a series of hearings on this bill, but it was still in that committee as of Friday, March 25th. If it comes out of committee in the next few days and goes to the Rules Committee, it has three options. The Senate could vote on it or have it recommitted or tabled. At this point, you may ask your senator to call for it to be tabled or reconsidered, if there is a full-Senate vote. Tabling or reconsideration could stop it.
- To read the rest of this newsletter in PDF format, please click here.