The U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are on the point of clearing legislation to require most employers and health insurers to provide parity in the benefits private insurance companies offer for mental and physical illnesses.

Less than a year after his father’s death in a plane crash, David Wellstone took up his father's cause, his legacy, the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act, which would compel insurance companies to offer as much coverage for the treatment of mental maladies as for other medical and surgical needs.

Paul Wellstone, a two-term U.S. Senator from the U.S. state of Minnesota, started pushing the legislation in 1992. Currently, his son is working to pass it. For the past one year and a half, every two weeks, David Wellstone has flown from his residence in California to Washington, in order to push for the final passage of legislation. "We've gotten this close," he said. "We've got to get it done now.” At first, he got involved for the reason that “this was my dad's, a legacy bill for him."

David admitted to have been impressed by people struggling with mental illnesses, who couldn’t pay for treatment due to expensive insurance costs. So he became conscious of the problem and realized the right thing to do was to try to fight for them.

The lower house of the bicameral U.S. Congress passed the mental health measure by a vote of 376 to 47, whereas the upper house passed the bill by a vote of 93 to 2. The proposed legislation involves co-payments and deductibles, on top of doctor visits and hospital stays.