Hello John,
We wanted to make sure you saw this timely op-ed by our Legislative and Policy Counsel Michael Gray. In his op-ed, which ran in The Hill last Friday, Gray calls on Congress to repeal the IMD exclusion, a provision that denies vulnerable Americans with severe mental illness equal access to medically necessary health care services.
He also calls on states to apply for or amend existing Section 1115 Medicaid waivers to allow funds to be used for inpatient psychiatric care, like Maryland has now done after consulting with us. If Maryland’s waiver is granted, 10 states across the country will have obtained an exemption from the IMD exclusion’s discriminatory ban on using federal funds for inpatient care in hospitals with more than sixteen beds. Thousands of Marylanders will benefit from this waiver. We have just started to knock down this offensive barrier to life-saving treatment for so many people.
