End of double standard Presidential support for mental-health parity bill.

Anyone who has a mental illness, or has a family member or friend with mental illness, will be heartened by what President Bush said this week.

"Americans with mental illness deserve our understanding and they deserve excellent care," he said on Monday in New Mexico. "They deserve a health-care system that treats their illness with the same urgency as a physical illness."

To the victims of mental disease, those observations are obvious.

But the President's words were a breakthrough nonetheless. Delivered as he stood next to Sen. Pete Domenici (R., N.M.), Mr. Bush's remarks were a huge and hopefully decisive boost for a federal mental-health parity bill co-sponsored by Mr. Domenici and Sen. Paul Wellstone (D., Minn.).

This overdue and long-needed legislation - which recognizes that mental illness is a disease like any other - may finally win passage in Congress with the backing of a formerly reluctant president. Only some House Republicans remain opposed to the bill.

For those thousands of families who have suffered because of the unequal way that many health plans treat mental disease, this is the time to pressure House members to do the right thing and support this law.

The mental-health parity bill improves on a federal law that expired last year. It is as significant for what it does not do as for what it requires.

Under the bill, no company will be forced to offer mental-health treatment coverage to employees (though some states already have such laws).

But employers who already offer mental-health coverage would have to equalize benefits for mental and physical disorders. In other words, if a worker has a co-pay requirement of $15 for a drug needed for a physical ailment, the co-pay couldn't be higher for a mental disorder drug. If a plan guarantees so many visits to a doctor dealing with a physical illness, the same number of visits would be guaranteed for a mental illness.

Substance abuses - including drug and alcohol addiction - are not covered under the bill, though probably they should be. And the bill doesn't circumvent managed-care restrictions: Mental treatment must be deemed to be medically necessary. This should prevent frivolous claims for treatment of, say, jet-lag disease.

Mental-health parity is a big national trend. Thirty-four states (including New Jersey and Delaware) have various forms of parity laws on the books.

Research has shown the laws have not discouraged employers from offering mental-health coverage.

Mental-health parity would cost more. A Congressional Budget Office study estimates that a federal parity law would raise health insurance premiums 0.9 percent. But think of the cost, on the other hand, of lost days - and sometimes violent attacks - by workers whose mental disorders go untreated.

It's time for this good law to pass.