SEN. COLLINS AND REP. WAXMAN REQUEST MEDICAL TREATMENT FOR CHILDREN SUFFERING FROM MENTAL ILLNESS
"These new audits could take away millions of dollars from a mental health system already stretched passed its limit, threatening the viability of institutions that provide critical mental health services to children in need," Senator Collins said. "It is critical that we continue to allow Medicaid to legally cover the medical treatment of children in mental health facilities. Our mental health system is in crisis, and this initiative will only worsen the situation."
At issue is a new initiative by the Inspector General based on a new definition of the "IMD exclusion," which excludes federal funding for services provided in "institutions for mental diseases." According to this new interpretation, Medicaid funds cannot be used to support the medical care of low-income children in mental institutions. Senator Collins and Representative Waxman find this definition misguided, since the Department of Health and Human Services reported in 1992 that the "IMD exclusion" applies only to adults over the age of 21—thus providing for the medical care of individuals under the age of 21.
Senator Collins has long been a champion for helping families and children suffering from severe mental illness. In 2003, she requested a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report which found that, in 2001, parents placed more than 12,700 children into the child welfare or juvenile justice systems so that these children could receive mental health services. This is just the tip of the iceberg, since 32 states – including five states with the largest populations of children – did not provide the GAO with any data.
Senator Collins also chaired a series of hearings in the last Congress in the Governmental Affairs Committee where testimony was heard from mothers who said they were advised that the only way to get the intensive care and services that their children needed was to relinquish custody and place their children in the child welfare or juvenile justice system.
Senator Collins and Congressman Waxman released a report last year that found that all too often children suffering from mental illness are left to languish in juvenile detention centers, which are ill-equipped to meet their needs, while they wait for scarce mental health services. Over a six month period, nearly 15,000 young people -- roughly 7 percent of all of the children in the centers surveyed – were detained solely because they were waiting for mental health services outside the juvenile justice system. The report also estimated that juvenile detention facilities are spending an estimated $100 million of the taxpayers' money each year to warehouse children and teenagers while they wait for mental health services.
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