Step for Mental Health Care?

So FINALLY, according to the New York Times the House has passed a bill that requires insurance companies to provide mental health insurance parity, meaning that mental illness must be treated on par with physical illness. And the insurance companies, obviously, are PISSED!
This, in my opinion, represents a huge step in US mental health rights. Even with good insurance (which I lack, but whatever) being less than totally sane is extremely expensive in this country. So, good going!

The bill would ban insurance companies from setting lower limits on treatment for mental health problems than on treatment for physical problems, including doctor visits and hospital stays. It would also disallow higher co-payments.

I mean, obviously, I am still waiting until there is national health care but till then, I am pleased with this in principle.

I guess the Senate passed a more limited version of this sort of bill last fall, which Mr. Bush prefers because he thinks the new one includes too broad a list of disorders.

The House bill would require insurance companies that offer mental health benefits to cover treatment for the hundreds of diagnoses included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, from paranoid schizophrenia to stuttering to insomnia to chronic melancholy, or dysthymia.

The Bush administration and other opponents say the list of disorders is far too broad. That leads from parity to another, parallel morass in the fields of psychiatry and pharmacology. Both fields are accused of over-diagnosis and of seizing on fashionable diagnoses — bipolar disorder or post-traumatic stress disorder, for example — for financial gain or through highly subjective assessments.

Mental illnesses are over diagnosed. Old fucking news. This does not mean that people who ACTUALLY live with these diseases do not deserve care.