I know it’s only September but I think it’s safe to say that Blue Cross and Blue Shield is the undisputed winner of the 2011 If-At-First-You-Don’t-Succeed  Award.

After losing the decades-old mental health parity battle with the passage of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act in 2008, Blue Cross and Blue Shield has orchestrated a very clever end run around the new law.

Here in Florida, it will work like this: As of Nov. 30, BCBSF will cancel is contracts with mental health care providers and switch to a new managed care vendor – New Directions Behavioral Health of Kansas City, Missouri. Providers – psychologists and mental health counselors – will have to decide if they want to sign a contract with New Directions in order to continue treating their Blue-Cross insured patients.

This may look like nothing more than common-sense corporate housekeeping but it is shaping up to become a devious scheme to deny mentally ill patients the treatment they are legally entitled to under the new parity law.  Here’s the rub: in some cases New Directions is paying counselors 30 percent less than Blue Cross for the same services.

Here’s what puzzles me: How can New Directions claim its reimbursement rates are “usual and customary” when BCBSF was paying mental health providers 30 percent more for the same services? Whose “usual and customary” rates are we supposed to believe? New Directions or BCBSF?

You could argue that New Directions’ “usual and customary” data are more accurate because the company specializes in mental health case management. I might even believe that except for one little problem: Blue Cross and Blue Shield and New Directions are partners.

This seems a little sketchy, doesn’t it? Especially when you consider that BCBSF sent out notification letters earlier this summer and gave providers between 15-30 days to sign on with New Directions. What’s the rush? Connie Galietti, executive director of the Florida Psychological Association, expressed the same concern, along with five other disturbing requirements in the contract, in her Aug. 10 letter to Kevin McCarty, …

I think the people who set the prices for my medications are the same folks who decided Michael Vick should be paid $100 million for playing football.

I took a look at the actual price of my antidepressants and mood stabilizer yesterday and about passed out. Over $1,000 for a  3-month supply of my medications. You’re probably wondering how that amount of money could have slipped by a coupon-clipping, single-mom with a kid in college. Well, I am one of the most blessed people on the planet. I have medical insurance. Really good medical insurance with prescription drug coverage (God bless my employer).

I have this amazing prescription program for maintenance drugs – everything from birth control pills to Lipitor and, yes, antidepressants, anti-psychotics and mood stabilizers. I get a 3-month supply of generics for $30 and brand-name drugs for $60. Doesn’t matter which drug. They are all $30 for 3-months of generics and $60 for 3 months of brand name.

I know. It is an obscenely good deal and I am blessed – truly blessed – to have this benefit. I will be the first to tell you that until the other day, when I looked at the actual receipt, I took this benefit for granted. I’ve been getting this deal for so long that I just open the package when it comes in the mail and toss the paperwork in a folder in my files.

I have often thought about running for office. Don’t laugh. I mean it.

As a journalist I have spent over three decades seeking and listening to all sides of a story. I am trained to be objective and fair. I know how to investigate, challenge and ask questions and I am not afraid to do it. I don’t suck up to anyone and I am not affiliated with any political party. I clean my own house and pull my weeds and do not have any undocumented workers on the payroll. I can handle deadlines and a chain-saw. I know how to live paycheck to paycheck.

It is not money or a skeleton in the closet that keeps me from running. It is my mental illnesses: alcoholism and hypomania.  I am not ashamed of being an alcoholic or  having a bipolar disorder. Actually, I think my illnesses would make me a better politician. Hitting bottom leaves you with genuine humility and no one works harder or thinks outside the box – waaaay outside the box – more than us folks with bipolar disorder. They are illnesses – just like any other illnesses, right?

Wrong.

Today, across the world of psychiatry, pharmacology and the water cooler, yesterday’s New York Times Opinion piece, In Defense of Antidepressants, will be discussed, debated, praised and torn to shreds. Which is why I would like to take a different tack and offer my take on the Times’ recent coverage of mental illness.

For the last few years the Times has published a stunning array of mental health related articles. The articles do not pander to that little slice of celebrity voyeurism we all secretly indulge. And they are devoid of fear-mongering sensationalism that follows every shooting-spree committed by a gunman “with a history of mental illness.”

Where is Patrick Kennedy when we need him?!

Recently, the folks drafting rules for the 9/11 Compensation Fund announced that the $2.8 billion fund created by Congress last year will not cover mental health problems caused by 9/11.

The Special Master notes that as in the Fund’s first iteration, the statute limits eligible injuries to those consisting of ‘‘physical harm.’’ Accordingly, as in the Fund’s first iteration, the statutory language does not permit the Fund to cover individuals with only mental and emotional injuries, even if the mental and emotional injuries are covered by the WTC Health Program.

Apparently, the fund’s newly-appointed special master, Sheila Birnbaum, hasn’t heard about the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA). I understand that the statute governing the 9/11 Compensation fund governs her duties to disburse the money to deserving survivors.

However, couldn’t Birnbaum take a stand and argue that because the brain is a part of the human body – ergo “PHYSICAL” – that “mental and emotional” injuries should be covered – especially since the MHPAEA is now the law of the land? In the spirit of parity don’t you think the government ITSELF should voluntarily commit to mental health parity when it comes to using tax dollars to provide ANY KIND OF HEALTH CARE!

Jaret Vogel called me last year after I wrote an article about the the dilemma facing families when their mentally ill child turns 18-years-old. There had been a horrific shooting at a family’s Thanksgiving dinner in 2009. The shooter, 35-years-old, killed his twin sisters, his 76-year-old aunt and 6-year-old cousin asleep in her bed. He had a 16-year history of mental illness.

As anyone who has an adult child with a mental illness can tell you, there is not much you can do when that child has all the rights and responsibilities of an adult. They can make their own financial, legal and health care decisions. That means the the programs and laws available to make sure they get the care they need – even if they don’t want it – vanish. Often, because of privacy laws, parents cannot even learn about their adult child’s decisions until there is a crisis.

That’s why Vogel called me. As a financial services professional in South Florida, Vogel had seen anguished families’ attempts to become the legal guardians of their disabled adult children. It takes thousands of dollars and a court order to establish guardianship. By the time a mentally ill child becomes and adult, many families are tapped dry – having already spent thousands of dollars on medications, treatment, hospital stays and therapy.