Last month, a proposal to expand the number of young Californians receiving crucial mental health care died quietly that resulted of the denied mental health care in the Legislature last month.
No help for California youths resulted of the denied mental health care (Photo: osplabs)
The powerful Assembly Appropriations Committee put a bill that would have made it tougher for insurers to refuse mental health coverage to youth “on suspense” with no debate or public comment, which will denied mental health care. That is, it will no longer be taken into consideration.
According to Capital & Main, that is not new; it happens all the time with bills. However, according to the state, the demand for such mental health care is increasing. According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, anxiety and depression diagnoses for children aged 3 to 17 in California increased by 70% between 2016 and 2020. Only South Dakota experienced a more drastic increase during that time span, that is why denied mental health care is not an option.
“They thought it was too expensive to move forward, essentially,” said Lishaun Francis, director of the Children Now advocacy group, which supported the bill. “No one knows what that means.” We don’t know why some products are shelved and others are not.”
Meanwhile, more of the state’s younger individuals remain untreated. According to Francis, the COVID-19 epidemic increased anxiety and depression diagnoses for California youths much higher than the already-high 2020 level. Even when a doctor has suggested treatment, health insurance companies often deny such coverage that resulted to denied mental health care among youths.
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SB 238, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, would have required that any such denied mental health care for Californians aged 26 and under be appealed to the state’s Independent Medical Review program. In 2022, approximately 80% of youth mental health coverage denials appealed to the IMR were overturned, implying that individuals eventually obtained the care they required.
According to The Imprint, however, only a small percentage of all denied mental health care are appealed. Denials of service will persist unless a patient or their family understands how to navigate the IMR process on their own. That is the current state of affairs.
This isn’t merely a procedural issue; it signifies drastically unequal access to care. The appeals do not reflect California’s varied population: call center statistics maintained by the state’s Department of Managed Health Care (DMHC) show that 94% of IMR appeals were filed in English and around 4% in Spanish between 2020 and 2022.
Although California medical providers are not required to report how many times they denied mental health care coverage for suggested medical care, regulators can estimate the number, according to a DMHC spokesman.
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