Georgia Legislature votes to expand access to mental health care

Insurance companies would have to start treating mental health care the same way they do physical health care under legislation that won final approval this past week in the General Assembly.

It was a big win for House Speaker David Ralston, who made it his primary goal this legislative session to improve Georgians’ access to mental health care services.

House Bill 1013 sat in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee for about two weeks, with hearings full of emotional testimony, before the two chambers reached a compromise.

Conservative groups and voters rolled out a number of claims about the measure. They included accusations that it would protect pedophiles from prosecution, require private insurance companies to cover treatments that go against the religious beliefs of the businesses’ owners and make it easier for the government to take away somebody’s guns.

Bill sponsors denied the legislation did any of those things, but they still made changes.

Georgia ranks low nationally on most measurements of mental health treatment, and a high percentage of its residents face challenges, according to a 2021 report by Mental Health America, a nonprofit advocacy group. It ranked Georgia last for the number of mental health professionals per capita. The state has only eight psychiatrists for every 100,000 children, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, which recommends a ratio of 47 per 100,000.

Those numbers won’t change quickly, senators said, but Georgia would move in the right direction under the bill.

“I’ll acknowledge that House Bill 1013 doesn’t solve our mental health crisis,” said state Sen. Brian Strickland, a McDonough Republican who sponsored the bill in the Senate. “Many parts of this bill have long-term investments that require much more work in the years to come.”

The measure — which, among other things, would also forgive student loans for mental health providers who work in underserved areas — can be traced back to more than 50 recommendations made by the Georgia Behavioral Health Reform and Innovation Commission.

A key point of the bill was parity, meaning equal treatment by insurance companies for mental and physical health care, complying with a 2008 federal law. Data has not been collected in Georgia to determine whether the state has achieved parity, but anecdotal evidence suggests it has not.

Ralston, as speaker, rarely puts his name on a bill, but he did it on HB 1013.

“Today, countless Georgians will know that we have heard their despair and frustration,” Ralston said after the final vote on the bill. “We have set Georgia on a path of lifting up and reforming a failed mental health care system.”

The bill now heads to Gov. Brian Kemp for his signature or veto.

David Ralston