National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc.

an educational foundation and advocacy organization serving mental health consumers and professionals

President’s Message:

You are needed – the articles in the January 2006 Coalition Report give you ways to act and to work with us now and throughout 2006 

è Active work is needed to impact the 2006 recommendations of the Citizen’s Health Care Working Group (CWG) through organizing broad public engagement, with our particular emphasis on engaging health care professionals and consumers.

Congress has given us an unprecedented opportunity by creating this non-partisan federally funded 2-year fact-finding citizens’ panel. The Citizen’s Health Care Working Group will keep engaging the public in a nationwide debate about shaping a health care system, a system that would “provide every American with the ability to obtain quality, affordable health care and present to Congress and the President in the fall of 2006 (before the elections) recommendations for health care that works for all… .”

To actively contribute to the organizing work needed for solidly impacting these recommendations, the National Coalition is a National Partner in the Making Health Care Work for All Campaign   - go to our Campaign site  here and also read the articles and fact sheets in this issue of the Coalition Report.

Our collaborative message is that the federal government must develop a strategy to achieve universal coverage by 2010, affirming the 2004 recommendations of the Institute of Medicine –  click here

To make sure that mental health and substance abuse care is not relegated to a low priority service by this Citizen’s Health Care Working Group that is charged by Congress to make recommendations to Congress and to lead to Presidential and Congressional legislative proposals by 2007, we must keep up the work!

We all know that the opponents of real change in the health care system will use their huge budgets to spread half-truths and total falsehoods. Health care industry propaganda must be countered with a powerful, positive message that:

·        Quality, affordable health care for all is a moral and economic necessity for our nation.  
·        By cutting waste and inefficiency in health care, we can afford health care for all.
·        The American public wants prompt action by our political leaders to achieve quality,
          affordable health care for all!

          The National Coalition needs from you that you pay close attention to all e-mails and reports from us and our partnering organizations, Making Health Care Work for All Campaign  and UHCAN), and be informed and ready to provide input on key questions from the CWG, to help organize your colleagues, and fellow health care consumers, to submit comments and testimony/recommendations by all traditional and electronic means of communicating, to attend CWG “official” Community Meetings, and/or organize your own local citizens’ community meetings.  See the GWG official site here.

è In the face of a disappointing, most poorly reasoned decision - the 3_rd Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the initial District Court ruling against our lawsuit. However, we remain steadfast in our fight – all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court - to achieve the judicial action to invalidate/overturn the Privacy (“Disclosure Rule” under HIPAA).

Our Petition for Rehearing and Rehearing En Banc was filed on 12/15/05– in order to move forward our lawsuit to restore privacy rights. The fight goes on for the restoration of patient consent prior to the release of personal (identifiable) health information.

Please read the articles in this newsletter on major Senate and House legislation – passed, and pending, which strip states’ rights. Stay informed – we are at a pivotal historical time which may be the very last time to protect our privacy rights for a very long time!

The National Coalition needs your renewed support of our lawsuit with fundraising – click here

è We continue to collaborate with a major initiative that is being launched to give parents information concerning the mental health needs of their families.  We will be continuing to raise and expand awareness that managed care has not only hijacked psychotherapy, but the entire assessment and referral process to remove choice and quality from consideration of a family’s mental health needs. 

Please see the very important information on this initiative to give parents vital information about the needs of their children, their families, and support their autonomy, privacy and control over decision-making. 

These and other efforts are aimed at creating a broadly-voiced grievance throughout our nation, a recognition among citizens that quality mental health care does not have to be sacrificed in the name of saving money for “priorities” and an awareness among families that there are more ways to help their child and their family emotional problems than medication. 

The National Coalition needs from you:

•      To support the goals and mission of the National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, you can start be joining us and become a member.  If you are a Member, thanks, and please renew promptly. Check with us if you are unsure: E-Mail us here     
•      If you are already a member, please recruit your colleagues, relatives, friends and acquaintances.  Students in professional training are greatly needed!
•      Find others to make additional donations. Any grant information and leads – contact persons - are most welcome as well!
•      You can then volunteer to serve on one of the committees and projects of the Coalition, even by doing advocacy work in your own community.   

 I repeat from my last Coalition Report message to you all: 

There are powerful forces arrayed against us, all with war chests of enormous sums of monies, and with clever ideas and their own ideologues and investors, with their own funded policymakers.  

We will continue to fight this fight, as long as you all stand with us. And, the next few years will tell, that we maximized our voices, and those of our fellow Americans, in advocating for prompt comprehensive reform – for affordable health care for all. 

Thanks, and be well. In the face of tragedies at home and abroad, I am trying to follow a saying attributed to Mother Jones:

 "Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living"

Dave Byrom