Gov. Pete Wilson has vetoed a bill that would have required insurers to cover severe, biologically based mental illness on par with their coverage of other organic diseases.
The action was decried by mental health advocates in California and nationally, who had hoped the nation's most populous state would join 19 others in adopting a law that creates some degree of parity.
Wilson, in a lengthy veto message to the Legislature, said he was rejecting the bill (AB 1100) because it was too broad and, together with other mandates on health plans, too costly. He said it would lead to higher premiums, causing workers to opt out of employer-based plans entirely.
"California's working families should have access to affordable mental health insurance coverage," he wrote. He suggested that his office would have been amenable to a less sweeping approach.
Instead, the bill's authors, Assembly members Helen Thomson and Don Perata, "engaged in a shortsighted 'all or nothing' strategy that would impose on employers coverage beyond what other states require and, in the case of many small employers, unaffordable cost increases. The unintended net effect could well be a loss of access to any coverage."
Mental health advocates countered that they had worked closely with the Wilson administration, agreeing to limit coverage to six severe, biologically based illnesses and to limit hospitalizations and day treatment.
In Orange County, advocates expressed sharp disappointment over the veto. After a two-year campaign for mental health coverage, many had remained hopeful to the last that Wilson would sign the bill.
"The general consensus here is that we question why mental health care even has to be legislated," said Sandy Cusmano, spokeswoman for the Orange County Mental Health Assn.
Preventive care for mentally ill people would help reduce homelessness and the towering costs of caring for people once they become too sick to care for themselves, she said.
Cusmano and other advocates said they will continue to seek parity for mental and physical illnesses and to work with health-maintenance organizations and insurance companies.
"Certainly we will continue to advocate for persons with mental illness and to provide community awareness," Cusmano said, though the veto is "very, very, very disappointing."
