by Thomas Breen
U.S. Sen. Blumenthal (center): “Only through uniform nationwide enforcement can we eliminate discriminatory barriers and guarantee equitable access to care for all families.” Credit: Thomas Breen photo
“If you see a cardiologist for chest pain, your health insurer is not going to make you prove that it really hurts,” Christian Damiana said at a press conference on the New Haven Green on Friday.
They’re not going to ask permission to schedule a follow-up appointment. They’re not going to state at the end of six appointments that you’ve improved enough and no longer need care.
“That’s exactly what happens with mental health treatment every single day in America,” he continued.
And that’s the type of disparity that laws like the federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) are designed to counteract.
“Your mind and your heart should be covered on equal terms,” Damiana said.
Damiana is the coordinator for the Connecticut Parity Coalition, a group of therapists, psychologists, and advocates that call for state and federal government to keep the pressure up on insurance companies to treat mental health with as much seriousness and urgency as they do physical health.
On Friday morning, he stood alongside U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal on the New Haven Green for a press conference criticizing the Trump administration for abandoning Biden-era rules designed to hold insurance companies accountable on that front.
The press conference took place on the same day that Blumenthal sent a letter to Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, expressing his “deep disappointment” in the federal government’s “refusal to defend” those 2024 rules under the MHPAEA in court, “effectively allowing the final rule to be struck down.”
Click here to read Blumenthal’s letter in full.
“Mental health and physical health should be insured the same way [and] entitled to equal benefits and the same kind of priority,” Blumenthal said at Friday’s presser.
He said that was the mandate of the MHPAEA, which Congress passed nearly two decades ago. That was the goal of the final rules put forward by the Biden administration in 2024. And that was what has been abandoned by the Trump administration in the face of a lawsuit from major insurance companies.
Damiana pointed out that, under Gov. Ned Lamont, Connecticut has passed “two of the strongest parity laws in America,” and the state has held “all five major health insurance carriers accountable for violating” those laws.
The Trump administration’s refusal to enforce the 2024 rules or promulgate new rules, however, has serious consequences in Connecticut, he said. That’s because the state’s law “points to the federal law as the mechanism for our enforcement.”
“When Washington guts those federal rules, our state’s ability to do that enforcement is gutted as well.”
Damiana said that, in January, the Connecticut Parity Coalition plans to call on state legislators to follow the lead of Washington State, Colorado, Maryland, and California in writing the 2024 federal protections into state law. That would mean that, regardless of who is in the White House, those rules would be in place.
“Somewhere in Connecticut, someone is trying to find a therapy appointment right now,” Damiana said. “In the insurance capital of the world, it ought to be the easiest place in America to make that call.”
Representatives from the federal treasury, labor, and health departments did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article. The federal government has stated in a federal court filing in the ongoing case The ERISA Industry Committee v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that they intend to reconsider the 2024 rule at issue in this litigation.