The EDC Blog - Click here for latest updates Day on Capitol Hill,
September 29th & 30th
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Get active! Capitol Hill is the place for eating disorder advocacy this Fall! The Eating Disorders Coalition is hosting its second Lobby Day and Congressional Briefing of 2010. |
| EDC Members with Senator Tom Harkin introducing the FREED Act in the Senate, April, 2010 | |
Join us as we advocate for the FREED Act, which is the first eating disorders legislation to comprehensively promote research, treatment, education, and prevention programs. Also - come say thank you and good-bye to our champion in the House, Congressman Patrick Kennedy, at our reception on Wednesday evening. |
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CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR
SEPTEMBER 2010 LOBBY DAY
NEDA 2010 Conference October 8-10, 2010 NYC
Something very special happens when families, people in recovery, and professionals meet together to learn at our conference. Every year, they tell us they’re filled with new energy, insight and knowledge. Translation? They’re better able to care for themselves, their loved ones and their patients. This year’s conference, with a focus on Recovery, will be no exception! Register now online at www.myneda.org
Get ready to be inspired by the most sought after experts from around the globe!
- Keynote speaker: Naomi Wolf, “Creating a Culture for Recovery that Defies Beauty Myths”
- Family Panel, moderated by Ovidio Bermudez, MD “Rebuilding Relationships”
- Plenary session: Janet Treasure, PhD, FRCP, FRCPsych, MD “Carers: Cultivating Hope for Recovery”
- Plenary session: Walter Kaye, MD and Kate Tchanturia, PhD, DClinPsych “Brain, Mind and Family: New Science, New Treatment, New Hope”
Design your own conference experience! Choose from nearly thirty sessions in five wide-ranging tracks.
Family Basic – Designed for those affected by eating disorders, whether new to the illness or not. Discover basic information for helping a loved one, student, friend, or yourself.
Co-morbid Conditions – This track will focus on treatment for common co-occurring medical and psychiatric conditions seen in individuals with eating disorders.
Special Issues – Open to everyone seeking to be updated on diverse special interest topics.
Treatment – Specially designed for those treating eating disorders and family members who want to learn from experts in the field.
Education and Outreach – Original and empirically supported approaches to eating disorders prevention, education, activism and outreach in school and community settings.
Register here and take advantage of our early bird rates good through July 31st!
Join in our Post-Lobby Day Letter
Writing Campaign!
Tired of . . .
insurance companies refusing to cover your treatment?
doctors being clueless about the seriousness of your eating disorder?
teachers and coaches at school not knowing how to respond to you as you suffer from the despair of an eating disorder?
watching your daughter, son, mother, or sister struggle with an eating disorder and not be able to help?
Help us pass the FREED Act, which will change all this.
The Eating Disorder Coalition needs you!
Be part of our Letter Writing Campaign with the goal of 1000 letters to Congress!
To continue the enthusiastic advocacy generated during the Eating Disorders Coalition's biggest Lobby Day ever, we are launching our biggest Letter Writing Campaign with the goal of encouraging 1000 of you to use your voice and write a letter to Congress!
Click here to write yours today!
Click Here to see pictures from our April 2010 Lobby Day
April 27, 2010
Harkin, Klobuchar,
Franken Introduce
First Senate Bill to
Confront Eating
Disorders in the U.S.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Al Franken (D-MN) introduced legislation today aimed at fighting and preventing eating disorders in the United States. The Federal Response to Eliminate Eating Disorders (FREED) Act is the first comprehensive legislative effort introduced in the Senate to confront the seriousness of these diseases and to jump start research as well as improve the prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment of eating disorders. It expands federal research, improves tracking and recording of the actual numbers of people suffering and dying from these diseases, provides training for a wide array of health professionals and educators to better identify and screen for eating disorders, creates a new patient advocacy program to help patients get proper care, authorizes grants for eating disorder prevention programs and builds on the mental health parity and health care reform bills to improve access to treatment, particularly for teens covered by Medicaid.
Click here for the full press release
EDC Hosts Successful Lobby Day on
Capitol Hill
The EDC hosted its first Lobby Day of 2010 in Washington DC with the introduction of the FREED Act in with Senate. We were thrilled that Senators Harkin, Klobuchar and Franken are championing this issue for us in the Senate. This is the first comprehensive eating disorders legislation ever introduced in the history of the Senate. The FREED Act will promote research, education, prevention and treatment of eating disorders
Click here for more information.
The Eating Disorders Coalition continues to gain cosponsors for the FREED Act (Federal Response to Eliminate Eating Disorders Act, H.R. 1193) since April's Lobby Day, bringing the current total number of cosponsors to thirty one! These include Representatives Patrick Kennedy [RI], Tammy Baldwin [D-WI2],
Dan Burton [R-IN5],
Lois Capps [D-CA23],
Russ Carnahan [D-MO3],
William Clay [D-MO1],
Steve Cohen [D-TN9],
Gerald Connolly [D-VA11],
John Conyers [D-MI14],
Joe Courtney [D-CT2],
Diana DeGette [D-CO1],
Keith Ellison [D-MN5],
Jo Ann Emerson [R-MO8],
Chaka Fattah [D-PA2],
Jim Gerlach [R-PA6],
Barton Gordon [D-TN6],
Alcee Hastings [D-FL23],
Rush Holt [D-NJ12],
Henry Johnson [D-GA4],
Steven LaTourette [R-OH14],
Carolyn Maloney [D-NY14],
Betsy Markey [D-CO4],
Thaddeus McCotter [R-MI11], James Moran [D-VA8],
Jerrold Nadler [D-NY8],
Grace Napolitano [D-CA38],
Todd Platts [R-PA19],
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R-FL18],
Mark Schauer [D-MI7],
Joe Sestak [D-PA7],
Christopher Smith [R-NJ4],
Christopher Van Hollen [D-MD8]
Click here to view the EDC's letter to Patrick Kennedy in support of FREED!
National Eating Disorders Association's National Bank of
Insurance Stories. It's time to talk about it.
With enthusiasm and appreciation, the AED Advocacy and Communication Committee announces the National Eating Disorders Association’s National Bank of Insurance Stories. It’s time to talk about it.
THE PROBLEM:
We have all faced it. Lack of treatment coverage at an appropriate level of care, premature discharge, and lack of adherence to professional guidelines, are experiences patients, clinicians, and families fight daily. Access to care is a fundamental, nationwide problem that frequently exacerbates the illness, destroying lives, while placing undue financial and emotional burden on so many.
A SOLUTION:
Insured patients and their families need a voice to communicate their experiences in the pursuit of treatment. The Advocacy and Communication Committee of the Academy for Eating Disorders urgently needs your help. We applaud NEDA for the development of the National Bank of Insurance Stories. The National Bank of Insurance Stories was created to document insurance struggles patients, families, and caregivers have faced. These stories will provide evidence of the breadth of this problem, and help to raise awareness. Providing an outlet to share the stories, we can help others know what has worked and what hasn’t, as well as to unite the community against the unconscionable policies and practices of insurance companies that discriminate against eating disorders treatment.
ACTION NEEDED:
With the cooperation of NEDA, AED, EDC, BEDA, IAEDP and others, the stories of the interface between patient, family, clinicians, and insurance companies can be heard. Please, consider taking up this mission with intent and with purpose. Please, spread the word about the NEDA Bank of Insurance stories. You can help by doing the following:
1) Refer your patients, families and colleagues to the following NEDA link:
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/uploads/NBIS%20eForm%20(fillable).pdf
2) Print this document and make it easily accessible to patients and their families.
3) Forward this to your colleagues, and encourage all to use their voice to make a difference.
4) Write letters to your local media informing them of NEDA’s National Bank of Insurance Stories.
Sincerely,
AED Advocacy and Communications Committee
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WASHINGTON, D.C., October 3, 2008
VICTORY IN PASSING MENTAL
HEALTH PARITY!
The EDC applauds Congress for their commitment to eliminating discrimination in health care coverage against people suffering
from mental disorders. After tireless negotiations between
differing House and Senate versions, both chambers came together to pass mental health parity this year. This bill requires group health plans that currently offer coverage for mental health and substance-use disorders to provide those benefits in the same manner as benefits provided to all other medical and surgical procedures covered under the plan. It also prohibits group health plans from imposing discriminatory annual/lifetime dollar limits, copays and deductibles, or day and visit limits unless similar limitations or requirements are imposed for other medical and surgical benefits.
“Everyday we get calls from parents whose kids are on the verge of death due to an eating disorder yet they cannot get their health insurance companies to pay for this life saving treatment. This law will change that,” says Jeanine Cogan, EDC Policy Director. The EDC was part of a broad based coalition of organizations actively advocating for the strongest mental health parity bill that could pass Congress this year. EDC President Kitty Westin was invited to testify before Congress to help make the case for a strong mental health parity bill and she spent many days in Washington DC lobbying with fellow advocates, including David Wellstone, son of the late Senator Paul Wellstone, who first introduced parity legislation in 1996. Kitty stated, “I am thrilled that we finally have a mental health parity bill that will close some of the loopholes in the earlier version. It was a long hard battle and we are proud that we played a key role in passing a bill that will help millions of people each year.”
There were two notable victories as a result of this advocacy. First, the parity bill extends coverage to out-of-network providers if that same coverage is available for physical illnesses. Therefore, if out-of-network benefits are extended to medical and surgical benefits under the plan, out-of-network benefits are extended to mental health and addictive disorders in a manner that is no more restrictive than the application of the terms and conditions with respect to the medical or surgical benefits as well.
Second, it ensures that stronger state parity laws already in existence remain intact. Whereas this parity law is similar to the one passed in 1996 in terms of the definition of mental illnesses, the EDC hoped to strengthen that definition by explicitly requiring all mental illnesses in the DSM to be covered. This was one of the provisions which did not survive negotiations. As a next step, the EDC will continue to advocate for provisions that require coverage for eating disorders treatment. As a compromise for conceding on the DSM, this bill directs the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to provide a report to Congress within three years of enactment of the bill on: Specific coverage rates for all mental health and substance use disorder conditions; Which diagnoses are most commonly covered or excluded; Whether implementation of the Act has affected trends in coverage or exclusion of mentalhealth and substance use disorder conditions; And the impact of covering or excluding specific diagnoses on participants’ and enrollees’ health, health care coverage and the cost of delivering care.
While plans will retain the right to manage the benefit as they see fit and determine the scope of coverage, they will have to provide to plan participants and employers the terms and conditions of the medical necessity criteria used by the plan upon request.
For More Information:
Eating Disorders Coalition for Research, Policy, and Action
David Jaffe, Executive Director manager@eatingdisorderscoalition.org
202-543-9570
EDC Statement in Response to Time.com article
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1963297,00.html
Contrary to what is concluded in this article, the Eating Disorders Coalition does not have a position on whether orthorexia is included as a separate category in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual. As a Coalition of more than 35 member organizations we represent people with varied perspectives and opinions. Some of those people may support having orthorexia added as a diagnosis and some do not. As a Coalition then, we respect what researchers, clinicians and other key stakeholders decide on this front.
Our mission is to advance the federal recognition of eating disorders as a public health priority. One of our specific policy priorities is to promote federal support for improved access to care. We support policies and decisions, such as the FREED Act, that will maximize the likelihood that those suffering from eating disorders get the treatment they need.
We made a request to the editor of Time.com to write a correction that the Eating Disorders Coalition does not have a stance on whether orthorexia should be included as a category in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual.
Thank you.
Jeanine Cogan, Ph.D.
Policy Director
Eating Disorders Coalition
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