This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, March 24th, 2008. I'm

Caleb Brown. The push is on for mental health parity legislation, an insurance

mandate that may keep insurance prices higher than they should

be.

It might also discourage lower cost preventive mental health care.

Michael Cannon, the Director of Health Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, discusses the implications of the mandate.

There is a new push for what is called mental health parity legislation, and mental health parity legislation called Mental Health Parity Legislation.

And mental health Parity Legislation is designed.

It's the idea that it will expand access

to mental health care, psychiatric care and care from psychologists and other mental health providers.

If you think about it, how, what are are what are the ways that Congress might promote

access to mental health to mental health services one of them one way would be to

impose a tax and fund programs designed to promote access.

The government could pay psychiatrists and other providers themselves. the government programs are

programs are unpopular, and government programs are unpopular.

So advocates of mental health services,

mental health care, have struck upon another way of trying to expand access to these services and really have government subsidize them,

where instead of the government taking the money from you in the form of taxes

and then spending it on mental health programs,

the government simply tries to force you to spend your money on the things that they want.

So what mental health parity legislation does is it says,

if you purchase health insurance

...