Maternal home visiting, mental health bills advance in House

The House Ways and Means Committee today voted to advance to the full House bipartisan legislation (H.R.8876) that would reauthorize the federal Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Program, and double annual funding for the program to $800 million over five years. The committee also passed five packages of mental health bills. Among other provisions, the bills would: 
•    Add Medicare outpatient mental health treatment options and direct the Health and Human Services secretary to revise the Medicare payment system for inpatient psychiatric facilities.
•    Add marriage and family therapists and mental health counselors as Medicare providers; remove regulatory barriers that prevent hospitals from offering wellness benefits to all physicians; and direct the Administration to consider ways to increase access to stimulant addiction therapy.
•    Require coverage of forensic medical exams with no cost sharing.
•    Require private health plans to provide more data on their mental health benefits.
•    Evaluate health plans on their mental health network adequacy and require plans to submit machine-readable files describing their mental health and substance use disorder benefits.