After several months of disagreements over a bill compelling group health insurance plans to offer equality for mental and physical illnesses, the Congress finally voted.

According to The New York Times, the legislation approved Tuesday by the House and the Senate would require equivalence in the benefits private insurance companies provide for mental maladies and physical illnesses.

The upper house of the bicameral United States Congress approved the legislation as part of a bill promoting alternative fuel consumption. The bill passed by a vote of 93 to 2 and will extend more than a dozen tax breaks due to expire at the end of the year, and also impose new ones for energy conservation and the use of renewable energy sources (hydropower, solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass).

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the mental health measure as a free-standing bill, by a vote of 376 to 47. Both the Senate and the House consented on the essence of the legislation. Procurement laws currently let insurers to show favoritism by setting higher payments for a health service or supply and by setting stricter limits on mental health benefits, the newspaper reported.

As stated by Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who is serving his seventh term in Congress as the representative from the First District of Rhode Island, "enacting mental health parity will affect nearly every individual in this country who has watched a friend or family member struggle with mental illness or addiction, or who has battled the disease themselves." Kennedy is one of the House sponsors.

The mental-health bill is backed by health advocates, insurance companies, the medical community, as well as the White House. However, the bill passing into law wasn’t guaranteed yesterday. The only setback that remained appeared to put an end to discrepancies in how to pay the cost to the government – about $3.4 billion of forgone tax revenues over 10 years. Moreover, lawmakers had to decide if the final bill would be included in a larger package of legislation or it would be a different measure, according to The Washington Post.

“We've come so very, very far," said Andrew Sperling, director of legislative affairs for NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness). "We are in a whole world of trouble if we don't get this done. We just can't pick up the pieces and start where we left off this year if it doesn't pass."

At present, no less than 42 U.S. states compel insurers to cover mental and physical illnesses in the same way. However, an estimated 82 million people labor for employers who self-insure which means that they are excepted from state equality laws. Besides them, there are 31 million individuals involved in other plans that don’t require them to provide equivalent coverage.
Provided the bill passes into law, the stigma of people suffering from mental illness will be eliminated and their dignity will be affirmed, said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota.

“Mental illness will no longer take a back seat to physical illness,” said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut.