Recently both the House and the Senate approved an omnibus FY 2010 spending bill that includes funding amounts for a number of federal programs including those in the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (Labor HHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). On December 11th, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to approve the omnibus FY 2010 spending package by a 221 to 202 vote. Yesterday, the Senate approved the spending bill by a 57 to 35 vote.

President Obama is expected to soon sign the measure into law. The full text of the spending bill can be found at: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/approp/app10.html.

Under the House- and Senate-approved FY 2010 omnibus spending bill, drug and alcohol prevention, treatment and research programming would receive the following funding amounts:

• The Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant would receive $1.7986 billions, a $20 million increase over FY 2009.

Health Reform Bill Unveiled in the Senate, Passes Crucial First Vote

Senate Democrats unveiled their healthcare reform legislation late Wednesday night. The bill would cost $849 billion over the first 10 years, cut the deficit by $127 billion over the same period, and expand health coverage to 31 million currently uninsured Americans.

As expected, the Senate bill released this week maintains the strong substance use disorder and mental health provisions from the HELP and Finance Committee bills, such as:

• Requiring substance use disorder and mental health services to be included in all qualified health plans as part of the minimum benefits package
• Requiring individual, small group and large group health insurance plans to comply with the Wellstone Domenici parity act
• Prohibiting discrimination by health insurers against individuals based on health status

Update: House Passes Healthcare Bill

After months of work, the U.S. House of Representatives passed its version of healthcare reform legislation, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, on Saturday, November 7th. The vote was 220-215, with 39 Democrats joining all but one Republican in voting against the bill.

As a result of the strong advocacy efforts of the Coalition for Whole Health and many others, the healthcare reform bill passed by the House contains a number of very good provisions to expand substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery support services and mental health services for millions of Americans. Specifically, the healthcare reform bill passed by the House:

• Includes substance use disorder and mental health benefits in the minimum benefit package that all qualified health plans will be required to offer