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Thirty-one states have now adopted parity legislation to bridge the wide insurance coverage gulf between the coverage of mental illness to those considered physical illnesses like heart disease, diabetes and cancer. We have been engaging in our own war to end discrimination against us and help bring about improved services, public safety and awareness, as we have watched the gulf between coverage widen even further every year. New York, a state first in the nation in so much of our country's progress during the past century, and which has one of the largest homeless mentally ill populations in the nation still continues to ignore the facts that show parity in insurance coverage for mental disease as being a critical first step in bringing equality to the one in five New Yorkers who suffer from mental diseases.

Current research breakthroughs clearly prove that mental diseases like schizophrenia, bipolar disease, major clinical depression and others are in fact physical, biochemical diseases no different than life-threatening physical diseases like high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. Meanwhile public officials throw away public money on unworkable new laws (Kendra's Law) with no infrastructure to make any immediate impact on the public safety issues which they tried to address, and may have politically, but failed to substantively.

They also continue to throw tens of millions of dollars at irrelevant, mid-20th century community based programs which do nothing to mainstream us from dependence to independence and everything to keep us in the revolving door of a system which they themselves have become dependent on for jobs. These include huge, richly endowed, even highly regarded provider agencies, but they have been dinosaurs for the past twenty years and billions of dollars are wasted on them. They segregate the mentally ill in ghetto housing and offer them cloistered programs to attend daily. Their time has come and gone. They have failed to move any substantial number of us into truly integrated mainstream life and work. All you need do is audit their records because these are the deliverables that really count. Parity in insurance and presumptive Medicaid coverage will deliver far more for every New Yorker. Whether mental disease is in your family or not, the public safety problems and tragedies will continue until we force them to make the relevant changes in the system of delivery.

Senator Joseph Bruno needs to do the right thing and allow S.2089 to pass this year, making New York the 32nd state to see this first vital step taken. Write Sen. Joseph Bruno, 909 Legislative Office Bldg., Albany, New York 12247 and ask him: "How much more will it take before New York joins with 64% of the nation's other states with parity?" Insist that S.2089 be reported out of the Insurance Committee now for a full State Senate vote. Tell him to end the discrimination against mental health insurance coverage, permitting access to treatment, which will prevent the loss of any more New Yorkers' lives because they were refused needed treatment. He can make it happen or continue to ignore the central issue of these problems. Make him understand the importance and future consequences of his choice.