Former U.S. Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy delivered the keynote address Oct. 21 at The LCADA Way’s 40th anniversary gala, calling for parity in access to mental health and addiction treatment and compassion for those in recovery.
Kennedy, 54, the son of the late U.S. Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy, who represented Massachusetts, shared his own recovery journey at the Embassy Suites in Independence.
He said he never planned on being an advocate.
“Last thing I wanted to do,” Kennedy said. “Last thing is to talk about the thing that was such a secret in my family, a secret that we kept bottled up in our family because we couldn’t afford to say a word about the alcoholism and addiction in our family, for fear that my family’s political opponents would exploit that, as they often get in the ways that they attacked my parents and my family for their suffering the disease of alcoholism and addiction.”
While undergoing treatment in his second term as a Rhode Island state legislator in 1990, Kennedy said his roommate sold the story to a tabloid, revealing his battle with addiction publicly and feared his political career would be over, due the stigma of mental health and addiction at the time.
Kennedy was the lead sponsor of the Mental Health Parity Act requiring insurance providers to provide parity in coverage between mental health and substance abuse disorders with surgical and medical benefits in financial requirements and treatment limitations.
He first introduced the bill in 1994 as a freshman, 27-year-old Congressman and in a 14-year legislative fight, had the Senate version of the bill (Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act) signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008 as rider legislation to the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
It provided an $800 billion bailout to financial institutions in the wake of the financial crisis with the help of his father Ted Kennedy and former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut.
When first introduced, Kennedy said he reflected that no other Congress member wanted to put their name to legislation treating mental health and addiction disorders as a disease of the brain.
“So, as the youngest member of Congress, from the smallest state in the country, Rhode Island, and in the minority party, I got to put my John Hancock on that bill, as the original sponsor of that bill,” he said. “Because no other member of Congress wanted to do a press conference saying, I am the sponsor of the bill with the word mental in it, and the words, addiction in it.
“Because, of course, all the press would ask, well, Congressman, because this is so important to you, can you tell us, have you ever had a mental health issue? Have you ever suffered from addiction? That’s a rabbit hole that no politician wants to go down, I can assure you.”
Electronic medical record systems still don’t efficiently document people suffering from addiction to prevent overprescribing of opiates, Kennedy said.
Since leaving Congress, he has worked through his organization, The Kennedy Forum, holding insurance companies accountable in adhering to the Parity Act, and tracking regulations and compliance in all 50 states.
“We’re losing 100,000 people a year,” Kennedy said. “And we know how to do something about this, but we still don’t have the political will to do it.
He also called for a new civil rights movement, acknowledging Ohio as ground zero for the overdose crisis and pointed the finger at the American Medical Association.
The worst of perpetrators is the American Medical Association,” Kennedy said. “They’re the ones who continue to push this relative value units, where they give higher value to everything else in medicine than chronic behavioral health issues, which my friends, is what’s killing our fellow Americans more than anything else,” Kennedy said.
“We’re seeing a reduction in the life expectancy of our fellow Americans. I don’t need to tell you in Ohio, you guys are ground zero for the overdose crisis. I’d be angry if I were you, and the way these illnesses are treated.
“And what we need to do is take a page from our friends from the civil rights movement, because our fight is the same. No more separate and unequal treatment.”
When Kennedy was arrested for OVI in 2006 while still serving in Congress, he publicly announced he suffered from an addiction to oxycontin, and lost count of the number of his Congressional colleagues who showed him compassion in sharing their own struggles, and those of their loved ones, underscoring the impact of behavioral health in this country.
