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A mental health bill authored by U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow is part of a tentative bipartisan Senate package announced Sunday that is aimed at reducing mass gun violence.
Stabenow’s bill, co-written by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Missouri, would expand a mental health and addiction treatment program that gives states funding for community behavioral health clinics that can be reimbursed through Medicaid for the full cost of providing mental health services.
The pair spearheaded a bill passed in 2014 that created a pilot program in eight states. It was expanded to Michigan and Kentucky in 2020. If the Senate package passes, the program would be implemented in all 50 states.
Medicaid now reimburses 13 community behavioral health clinics in Michigan for mental health and addiction services, five of which are in southeast Michigan.
Stabenow, D-Lansing, called the pilot programs “a proven success story” in a statement Sunday.
“This bipartisan proposal builds on our work and will make sure health care above the neck is funded the same way as health care below the neck,” she said. “It’s time to get this across the finish line and expand these highly successful clinics to people in every corner of our country.”
It is set to be part of a larger Senate package that would pair modest new gun restrictions with other mental health and school security investments, negotiated in the wake of mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas, Buffalo, New York, and the Nov. 30 shooting at Oxford High School in northern Oakland County that left four students dead.
The shootings prompted renewed calls from Republicans for increased mental health supports rather than gun restrictions proposed by Democrats.
The tentative deal includes a federal grant program encouraging states to pass “red flag” laws, which allow police to keep guns away from people who are deemed a potential threat to themselves or others by a court. It would also search juvenile justice records for gun buyers under 21 in federal criminal background checks.
Only a few of the Senate’s 50 Republican senators were involved in negotiating the package, which may still create hurdles for Democrats to reach a 60-vote threshold to pass the legislation. However, leaders of the negotiating group have said they believe there will be enough Republican votes.
Stabenow has long been an advocate for mental health treatment access. In the state House, she chaired the Mental Health Committee for five years and wrote the Children’s Mental Health Act. In the U.S. Senate, she authored the provision of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that requires all plans in states’ health insurance marketplaces to offer mental health and substance abuse services at the same level as other health services.
Her interest in mental health is rooted in her experience as a child watching her father grapple with bipolar disorder. Stabenow has said her father was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia and given drugs that made him shaky and unable to work.
Stabenow was in junior high when the family had to sell their home and downsize to another.
“I grew up pretty fast to help mom and dad,” Stabenow told The Detroit News last year. “There was understanding and support, but there just wasn’t help. My dad just wasn’t getting the kind of help that he needed.”
Years later at Michigan State University, Stabenow put a psychiatrist in touch with her parents, and soon her dad was receiving treatment he’d never had, the mood stabilizer lithium. It enabled him to return to work, she said.
“I’ve seen what happens when folks do get help and when they don’t get help, and what a difference that makes,” she said. “And I know that my story is not unique.”
Staff writer Melissa Nann Burke contributed.
rbeggin@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @rbeggin
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