Let's achieve mental health parity now.

As psychiatrists and other mental health professionals know very well, mental health and addiction treatment parity is long overdue in this country.

The 1996 Mental Health Parity Act--sponsored by my father, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) and Sen. Pete Domenici (R-Ariz.)--broke new ground by prohibiting unequal annual and lifetime limits for mental illness and addiction, compared with coverage for other medical and surgical illnesses. But insurers violated the spirit of the law by setting new visit limits, higher copayment and deductible fees, and other requirements for mental health and addiction treatment. Because of those shortcomings, mental health champions, like my dad, continued to press for legislation that was more comprehensive.

We just might be a little closer to achieving real mental health and addiction parity, thanks to legislation passed in early March by the House of Representatives. The legislation, called the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act, reflects years of negotiations with advocates for patients with mental illness, insurers, and business groups.

The bipartisan bill (H.R. 1424), sponsored by Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Rep. Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.), provides for parity in mental health and addiction benefits by prohibiting group health plans from imposing discriminatory annual/lifetime dollar limits, copayments and deductibles, or day and visit limits unless such limitations or requirements are imposed for other medical and surgical benefits.

The next step is for the House sponsors of this bill to sit down with the sponsors of the Senate version of the bill (Sen. Edward Kennedy [D.-Mass.] and Sen. Domenici) to reconcile the two versions. These negotiations are critically important.

I believe strongly that the patient protections in the House bill, such as greater access to care, must be included in the final bill. The weaker Senate version (S. 558) would allow plans to choose which diagnoses they want to cover, but the House version would require that the DSM be used as the basis for coverage.

Without these protections, insurance plans would be able to "discriminate by diagnosis" and plans could undermine the very essence of this legislation: fairness.

We look forward to the day when patients with mental illness and addiction receive fair, humane, and timely care. Mental health professionals must step up and let their senators and representatives know that they must make that day a reality now.

MR. WELLSTONE, son of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, is cofounder of Wellstone Action, a nonprofit organization dedicated to training and leadership development.