Don't Legislate Someone's Grief

Here is an example of bad policy that emanates from an individual tragedy that spurs the mournful into political action. I just received my monthly healthcare insurance bill and it contained a flyer informing me that certain mental health benefits required under "Timothy's Law" will cost me $8.84 per month. OK. So I checked out "Timothy's Law". You can too, here. It's a sad story and, as parent, I can understand the O'Clair's heartache, but this is a bad law. Stripped of the emotional context of Timothy's awful death, this is simply another typical coverage mandate that is a key culprit in driving up healthcare costs for everybody. There's alot to discuss here but let's put aside the theoretical case and start simply with the cost. From what I can gather, the law was passed under the premise that it would cost insured New Yorkers $1.26 per month. Would this law have been passed if the initial cost premise was closer to the reality of $8.84? Maybe, maybe not. Who knows? (Check out the picture here.) But nearly 7x the cost is significant and you can't ignore the possibility that the outcome would have been different. Legislators signed up their constituents for $1.26 per month and that may have been OK, but the bill has just arrived and it is seven times that amount. If you were buying almost any other product or service and you expected to pay $1 and the bill came in at $7, you'd be outraged and most likely refuse to pay or litigate. Unfortunately, insurance consumers have little recourse here but to drop coverage or suck it up.

There are numerous other obvious economic criticisms, i.e. here and here, but I would like to point out the inherent unfairness of foisting costs upon people who have no risk to certain healthcare needs. Timothy's Law is unfair to people who have no risk to child mental illness, like the childless, in the same way that mandating prostate cancer care costs to women is unfair or mandating lupus costs to men is unfair.

I grant that this is all a matter upon which good people can disagree, but unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. The most disturbing aspect seems to be Timothy O'Clair remains a poster child of sorts and it looks like his memory is being abused. It appears the Timothy's Law coalition has caught a case of mission creep. Perhaps imbued with a conquering spirit, having effected a change to our laws, they are seeking more changes that have little to do with their original mission, namely advocating for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It doesn't appear that PTSD had anything to do with Timothy O'Clair's tragic death and there is little logical connection to sufferers of PTSD and children like Timothy O'Clair. It seems that the Timothy's Law coalition is simply an advocacy group for increasing mental healthcare coverage mandates that is using - perhaps misappropriating - the "Timothy's Law" brand. Put less charitably, this coalition is fraudulently using the emotional power of this boy's tragic death to advance a universalist healthcare policy agenda. If you can find a reason why Timothy's death ought to animate us to socialize the treatment of a disease that affects people very much unlike Timothy, I would love to hear it.