NPN benefitsBlog

Mental Health Project/ Fifth Annual SoHo Art Auction

NPN is proud to support our friends at The Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center with their Fifth Annual SoHo Art Auction on Wednesday, March12, 2008, from 6-9 p.m. at Poltrona Frau, 145 Wooster Street (between Princeand Houston). All proceeds will support the Mental Health Project's advocacy for low-income and homeless New Yorkers with mental illness.

The Mental Health Project helps low-income New Yorkers with psychiatric disabilities break the devastating cycle of homelessness, hospitalization and incarceration and regain stability and independence.To find the people who need them most, The Mental Health Project goes to jails, psychiatric units,and shelters. They focus on essentials such as food, housing, medical care, and disability benefits. They work to discover gaps in the safety net and educate.organize, and litigate to close them.

Contributing artists include Richard Serra, Nan Goldin, Anders Goldfarb, Dina Bursztyn, Eric Pelka, Christopher Colvin, Kate Temple, Michael Lorenzini, Kate Temple, Laura Lienhard, and many more.

Preview Art and Bid Online You know you don't have to be a New Yorker to bid on this art work.

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Learn about NPN's similar project with our ArtWorks : Creative Industries Project where we are exploring ahead-of-the-curve business creation for artists with disabilities with new concepts in microloan funding and creative and sustaining use of the Social Security work incentives to fund self-employment for artists with disabilities. We are learning that art can offer significant opportunity for self-support for people with disabilities.

Advocates for Elderly and People with Disabilities Blast SSA for Cutting Benefits in Twisted Felon Law

Law for Hunting Fugitives is Stripping Survival Funds from Elderly, Poor and Disabled

Today NPN received a report from the Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center critical of the Social Security Administration for terminating the benefits of thousands of elderly, disabled, and poor Americans under the pretext of law enforcement. Thanks Bill.

In a new report entitled Social Insecurity; How the Social Security Administration's "Fugitive Felon Program" Harms Disabled, Retired and Poor Americans Without Aiding Law Enforcement, the Mental Health Project (MHP) finds that the Fugitive Felon Program ("FFP"), which is supposed to help police arrest wanted fugitives, is having the perverse effect of leaving thousands of retired and disabled people destitute and desperate.

Under the FFP, the Social Security Administration suspends the benefits of people who appear to have outstanding felony warrants or probation or parole violations, based on a crude computer match.

“This misguided policy is only making our neediest citizens more vulnerable” said Bill Lienhard, Director of the Mental Health Project at the Urban Justice Center and an author of the report. “It is clear that the Social Security Administration is denying benefits to people who are not wanted by the police and who aren’t running from the law. By stripping them of subsistence benefits – that cover medicine, food and rent – the government is throwing their lives into a tailspin,” he stated.

Social Insecurity finds that the Fugitive Felon Program often suspends benefits of individuals whom the police have no interest in arresting. Since the program began in 1996, SSA has identified over 300,000 “fugitives” who were receiving benefits – but only 13.6% have been arrested.

“Law enforcement officials seek out and arrest only a handful of the individuals receiving SSI, disability, or retirement benefits who have outstanding warrants,” said Jennifer J. Parish, Director of Criminal Justice Advocacy in the Mental Health Project. “The other 260,000 recipients lose their benefits after law enforcement decides not to apprehend them. This policy has done nothing to make our streets safer. It has only had drastic effects on destitute and elderly individuals,” she stated.

The Social Security Administration also suspends the benefits of people who have no outstanding violations due to a severely flawed database matching system. SSA often suspends an individual’s benefits if the identifying information in warrants only loosely matches their own records.

In one instance, a New York City resident was named the subject of outstanding warrants in Massachusetts until his lawyers determined that the person named was a woman with a different Social Security number. Separately, a woman in Nevada had her retirement benefits suspended on a 34-year-old warrant – that was intended for a man living in New York City.

The biggest victims of the FFP are recipients with severe mental illness. In one study, nearly 60% of the recipients whose benefits were suspended suffered from severe mental disabilities, including mental retardation and schizophrenia.

“It is virtually impossible to regain these benefits once they are stopped,” said Lienhard. “For many poor, elderly and disabled people, becoming ensnared in the federal government’s fugitive felony program is devastating. The bureaucratic obstacles to reclaiming benefits are virtually impossible to overcome,” he stated.

In December 2005, in the case of Fowlkes v. Adamec, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that SSA’s suspension of benefits on the basis of a felony warrant, without any inquiry as to whether the recipient was actually “fleeing” prosecution or incarceration, was illegal. Following the Fowlkes decision, SSA announced that it would stop suspending or denying benefits on the basis of an outstanding felony warrant in New York, Vermont, and Connecticut – yet the majority of the country is still subject to its policy.

In light of the continuing impacts SSA’s policy is having across the country, the Urban Justice Center’s report recommends:

• The Social Security Administration should apply the Appeals Court ruling to the entire country and suspend benefits only if people are actually fleeing from justice;

• The Social Security Administration should refine its data-matching system to guard against mistakes and identity theft;

• The Social Security Administration should help people obtain information about alleged warrants and violations.

Here is a copy of the full report.

Bipartisan Majority Approves Mental Health Parity Bill

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Ways and Means Health Subcommittee today passed HR 1424, the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007(September 19, 2007).

The bill, which has already passed the Education and Labor Committee and has been referred to the Energy and Commerce Committee, was approved 10 to 3.

The measure requires group health plans and group health insurers to establish parity with all mental illnesses and substance-related disorders benefits with medical and surgical benefits.

Specifically, the bill amends section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health Service Act, and section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require equity in the provision of mental health and substance-related disorder benefits under group health plans.

Mental Health Parity Day!

Today Wednesday, May 2, the National PASS Network joins Representatives Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), Jim Ramstad (R-MN) and national advocacy organizations for Mental Health Parity Day.

Mental Health Parity Day is a call upon members of Congress to support enacting bipartisan mental health parity legislation, H.R. 1424, “The Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addition Equity Act and to urge key committee leaders to review the legislation without delay.

The co-sponsors of the legislation will hold a press conference and operate a “war room” while constituents and representatives of national organizations meet with members of Congress to urge support for the bill.

NOW is the time to enact comprehensive mental health parity legislation and end health insurance discrimination. It is long overdue!

You can lend your voice in support of this legislation!

On Wednesday, May 2 call the national parity hotline (1-866-PARITY4). This hotline has been set up to connect you to your Representative.

The message is simple but vital.

Urge your representative to cosponsor and support the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act.” If your representative is already a cosponsor of the bill, urge them to contact their colleagues to support the bill and to press for enactment this year.

Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007

The Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007 expands the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 by prohibiting group health plans from imposing treatment or financial limitations on mental health benefits that are different from those applied to medical/surgical services. The legislation applies only to group health plans already providing mental health benefits and exempts plans sponsored by small businesses of fewer than 50 employees.

Mentally Ill In Prison System: 'Frequent Fliers'

One in six incarcerated prisoners in our nation's prison system is mentally ill. Many of these individuals have really very serious illnesses such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression. Three times as people with mental illness are in our prison systems as in mental health hospitals. Senator Patrich Leahy commented during hearings on the issue : "We know that more than 16 percent of adults incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons have a mental illness, that about 20 percent of youth in the juvenile justice system have serious mental health problems, and that up to 40 percent of adults who suffer from a serious mental illness will come into contact with the American criminal justice system." It is often said that the US prison system is the largest component our country's mental health system. It can be easily argued that correctional administrators are de facto mental health directors

An editorial in Saturday's New York Times questions the wisdom and costs of this head -in-the-sand approach. The article also suggests that states and their prisons are starting to figure out the lock-em-up -and-throw-away-the-key costs lots money. As the editorial suggests prison systems are moving to change by looking at recidivism or how to keep people from coming back to prison. Getting people with mental illness back on or on SSI and Medicaid may the best way to reduce prison overcrowding and its high costs.

Pressed by rising costs, the states are scrambling for ways to keep millions of people who are released from jails and prisons each year from coming back. An obvious first step would be to abolish senselessly punitive laws that make it difficult for felons to reconstruct their lives, like those in all 50 states that bar ex-convicts from occupations that have nothing at all to do with their crimes. Another prudent step would be to create high-quality programs that provide newly released people with counseling and job placement. Perhaps most crucially, those who qualify need assistance in getting back their federal disability and Medicaid benefits; inmates typically lose such benefits when they find themselves locked up for 30 days or more.

The loss of benefits is especially devastating for the mentally ill, who make up one-sixth of the prison population and who are particularly susceptible to recidivism. Most of them get psychiatric drugs and treatment for the first time in jail. They often improve quickly, but deteriorate just as fast when they are released without being re-enrolled in federal disability programs or Medicaid, which would give them access to medication and psychiatric care. Homeless, delusional and out of control, they are inevitably rearrested for behaviors related to their illnesses. Many of them come back to jail so regularly that corrections workers call them "frequent fliers."

The Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law has a definitive publication on the issue: Finding the Key to Successful Transition from Jail to the Community: An Explanation of Federal Medicaid and Disability Program Rules