The National Coalition is spreading the truth about managed mental health care: it deprives patients of needed treatment, it takes scarce funding away from patients and puts it into administration and profit, it punishes the competent and conscientious professionals, it misleads the public about its effectiveness, and it encourages unethical professional behavior.

The National Coalition helped create almost every major media exposé of managed mental health care. Its members are the most quoted opponents to managed care, and it locates consumers who are willing to speak publicly about their managed care treatment. Its accomplishments include major stories in The Family Therapy Networker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, Time, and U. S. News and World Report, and on CNN Special Reports, 60 Minutes, and Nightline.

When the professional organizations could only recommend grieving the loss of our profession, the National Coalition steadfastly pushed them to confront the unethical and unprofessional actions of managed care. Its members are active leaders in all professional organizations. In psychology, Dr. Karen Shore, President of the National Coalition, has been voted the Psychologist of the Year for 1997 for the Division of Independent Practice for her leadership in the battle against managed care.

The members of the National Coalition wrote articles in major journals that expose the unethical behavior of managed care; confronting managed care about the immorality of depriving consumers of privacy in psychotherapy, the right to choose a professional, and the right to control the treatment of their own minds and bodies; revealing that managed care does not make treatment economical, but merely secretly eliminates treatment in a process of invisible rationing; and showing that managed care bases its cost-cutting methods on fictional research findings. These articles form the core of the professional literature needed to confront managed care abuses.

The National Coalition has written innovative model legislation, analyzed legislation, prepared lobbying packages, provided information for state lobbying, and sent petitions to the President. In addition, through its e-mail network, it provides on-going legislative alerts. During the election campaign it sent political packets to all congressional and presidential candidates.

The National Coalition coordinates efforts of 18 state affiliates, publishes a bi-monthly newsletter, has held two national conferences, maintains web pages, and maintains a national e-mail network for local leaders.

The National Coalition created a network of mental health professionals and attorneys that has been involved in the formative stages of several lawsuits against managed care and the creation of the Legal Center for Patients Rights. It is continuing to develop legal challenges to managed care.

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Rescue Health Care Day events were held in 35 cities across America

The marches and rallies led to widespread TV, radio, and newspaper coverage raising public awareness that WE CAN REPLACE MANAGED CARE!

Our organizing work attracted over 200 consumer and professional organizations, many of which want to continue to work together for real health care reform

From this we have teamed up with "U2K" - Universal Coverage in 2000 - this campaign has built a network of many supporting health care justice groups, labor unions, faith communities, disability advocacy groups, seniors and now, professional groups.  Two Coalition Board members serve on the U2K Steering Committee.

Now, in order to obtain treatment under managed care, patients must expose personal information to antagonistic and judgmental utilization reviewers, must allow personal information to be stored in electronic data banks, and must tolerate having personal information available among numerous insurance industry employees. On the other hand, the operations of managed care are proprietary and confidential. This is backwards. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will advocate for privacy for patients and disclosure for corporations.

In spite of the destructive impact that most professionals and consumers have witnessed, managed care plans to flood the marketplace with outcome data that mislead the public by making it appear that patients are better off in managed care. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will expose how this outcome data is "sugar coated" to give a better impression than the true outcomes, and it is "puffed" to inflate its size.

Although more professional organizations are speaking against managed care, behind the scenes there is a strong movement to neutralize the professional organizations in order to protect the position and profits of the members who invested in managed care. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will fight to keep the professional organizations active and committed to the battle.

The managed care industry claims to be self-regulate through the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Unfortunately, this industry dominated organization endorses the undesirable practices of depriving consumers of the right to appeal treatment to an impartial body, denying the right to second opinions, denying consumers the right to have control over the treatment of their own minds and bodies, permitting managed care to use secret economic criteria for choosing professionals, and permitting managed care to create and use secret treatment guidelines. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will confront the NCQA.

The government has been forced to admit that managed care is not working, but still is enchanted with its ability to reduce expenses, particularly, Medicaid and Medicare. Most proposed legislation is just decorations on the tip of the managed care iceberg. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will hire a lobbyist and advocate for true reforms. Managed care must be forced to disclose its finances, its secret treatment guidelines, its hidden policies for denying and treatment, and its hidden financial incentives. Once these are disclosed, the public will see what professionals witness daily - managed care is the worst possible health care system.

Consumers now have little recourse in the face of managed care. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will aid states in establishing "mental health insurance hot lines" that will give consumers the information they need to get the most out of their insurance and mobilize consumers to change the system.

Cost controls are possible without lowering professional income to the point that qualified professionals must leave the field. Consumers want their health care professionals to earn a fair income, but managed care, which responds only to the bottom line and not to quality, blindly squeezes salaries below professional levels. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will join with consumers in fighting for reasonable pay for professionals.

Too many people think that managed care is the only way to control health care costs. With your help and membership, the National Coalition will disseminate information about the many alternatives to managed care which include single payer systems, some medical savings accounts, expanded consumer information systems similar to Consumers Reports, the American Mental Health Alliance, consumer cooperative insurance companies, and innovative systems that give consumers the incentives to control their own health care expenses.