(11-14-18) U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II announced yesterday that the Trump Administration will allow states to apply for Medicaid waivers so the federal government can begin paying for mental health treatment delivered in inpatient settings known as IMDs, or institutions of mental disease.
This is a major change that most recently was requested in a September 12 letter written by National Alliance on Mental Illness CEO Mary Giliberti and signed by eleven of the fourteen non-federal members of the Interdepartmental Serious Mental Illness Coordinating Committee. As a member of ISMICC, I signed that letter. The move was backed by Assistant Secretary for Mental Health Dr. Elinore F. McCance-Katz.
Azar’s announcement should lead to more Americans with serious mental illnesses being able to get short-term, in-patient residential care because the federal government will pay for it.
Approximately 10.4 million adults in the United States had an SMI (serious mental illness) in 2016, but only 65 percent received mental health services in that year.
Attempts in Congress to overturn the so-called IMD Medicaid Exclusion, which prohibits the use of federal Medicaid financing for care provided to most patients in mental health and substance use disorder residential treatment facilities larger than 16 beds, failed because of lobbying by groups that argued eliminating it would lead to a greater use of inpatient hospital beds and the construction of more hospital-like residential facilities rather than spending federal funds for community services. In the House during hearings about a major overhaul of mental health services, Democrats successfully kept Republicans from removing the IMD exclusion. Granting waivers gives states a pathway around the IMD Exclusion and its supporters.