health community because of the coverage expansions coupled to parity. okay, and let's talk a little bit more about that health parity and addiction equity act, the mental health parity and addiction equity act, richard. expand a little bit on, particularly the types of links that are going to be made with the aca. the wellstone-domenici parity act, which was passed in 2008, went into effect in early 2010. and what it does is it really provides fairness and coverage along two dimensions. first, it requires that the standard benefits in an insurance plan be the same for the medical surgical side as it is for the behavioral health side. and so right away that means that copayments, deductibles, limits will be the same. it does a second thing, which is equally important, which is it says that if you are going to manage care, that is okay and you can manage it differently, but you have to base it on the same clinical criteria, the same evidence, and the same logic that you use to make all your other management decisions. and in that sense, what it is doing is it's demanding fairness on the management side, as well as on the benefits side, which is really rev

march 14 we have former representatives patrick kennedy and jim ramstad will be discussing the mental health parity act and on april 4 we have doctored deepak chopra founder of the chopra foundation and the chairman of the chopra center for well-being and second i would like to present our guests with a traditional mug. >> oh boy. thank you very much. [applause] >> i have one last question. you talk about being, all of the should be prepared and i would like to know what you have in your red-tagged? >> i have the king of ready bags. i have you know a set of clothes, first aid equipment extra batteries, extra chargers, couple of good books and the phone number and e-mail address of everybody i'm going to have to be in touch with if i ever have to use that ready bag. all of you all should have a ready bag as well. alright, thank you. [applause] >> i want to thank all of you for coming out today. i would like to thank the national press club staff including the library broadcast center for organizing today's event and finally here's a reminder that you can find out more information about the national

then we have patrick kennedy discussing the mental health parity act and on april 4, we de drepak chopra, and i would like to present our guest with the traditional npc mug. >> oh boy, thank you very much. [applause] >> i have one last question. you talk about that all of us should be prepared and i would like to know what you have you're ready bag. >> i have the king of ready bags. i have my set of clothes, first- aid equipment, extra batteries, extra chargers, a couple of good books, and the phone number and e-mail address of everybody i will have to be in touch with if i have to use that ready bag. all of you all should have a ready bag as well, thank you. [applause] >> i want to thank all of you for coming out today and i would like to thank the national press club's staff including the library and broadcast center for organizing this event and here is a reminder that you can find more information about the national press club on our website. if you like to get a copy of today's program, please check out our website www.press.org and i would like to thank you very much. we are adjour

health insurance for screening for depression. and that is a big leap that, combined with parity legislation, that has allowed us now to health insurance, now have to pay for mental health services. both of these may be small steps in some respect are huge steps in our field because it helps take care of that discrimination and helps people become a little bit more accepting. that we are talking about health, major health conditions that they may be mental health, they may be emotional health. and as a matter of fact... language is important, emotional health transcends to all of what we are talking about today under behavioral health. because if you are emotionally healthy you have a strong character, you have confidence in yourself, your family is emotionally healthy. we're looking at lowering risk for behavioral health problems across the board. and of course our audience needs to realize that under the parity law small businesses of more than 50 people that are already covering certain conditions need to also cover mental health conditions as well, correct? correct, and some of your listeners may not realize that that has not been done before. and that is one

mental health. he and any parity for treatment of addiction. minnesota has been a leader in addiction treatment and we are very proud of that. in minnesota, we have seen drug courts do pretty good -- do very good things. we talked to you return on investment, both in your opening statement in response to senator kohl. and part of this is recidivism. we found a minnesota that drug cards are less likely to be arrested for another client has offenders prosecuted in traditional court and this of course with an equivalent kind of arrest senator. i want to after seeing that trend nationwide in terms of recidivism. >> with respect to recidivism. one of the primary things that make them affect what is the impact on me or just depends. and so 84% of graduate school of counter the program remained drug-free. after graduating after the first graduation. with respect to the two-year mark, two years after 73% of those participants have not had not been rearrested are charged with any serious crimes. so this is true consistently with respect to the research