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Letter: Mental illness patients discriminated against

by | Apr 3, 2018 | In The Media, Project Access

Times Union, March 22, 2018, Letter from Andrew Malekoff

Although our children’s safety is paramount (“School safety debate evokes Albany deja vu,” March 7), in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting, we must understand that it is incredibly rare for people living with mentally illness to be violent. In fact, they are far more likely to be the victims of violence than the perpetrators of it.

Nevertheless, we do need to have a discussion about mental illness at a time like this. That discussion, however, needs to be about how the health insurance industry and the elected officials who depend on their donations are failing miserably at having adequate networks of providers on their lists who take insurance.

Why is this? Health insurers pay substandard rates of reimbursement; consequently, fewer and fewer providers will accept insurance.

Health insurers are discriminating against people living with mental illness and addiction. This is a violation of civil rights and federal parity law, which government regulators then fail to enforce, as is their statutory responsibility.

In New York, the Department of Financial Services (DFS) is charged with enforcement. I urge Gov. Andrew Cuomo to authorize, and DFS Commissioner Mary Vullo to implement a full-scale investigation into network adequacy during this, the 10-year anniversary of the bipartisan Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008.

Andrew Malekoff

Long Beach

Executive director and CEO of North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights

Getting Sandy Koufax’s Autograph Was Worth the Risk

Getting Sandy Koufax’s Autograph Was Worth the Risk

by | Apr 2, 2018 | In The Media

Newsday, Opinion, March 28, 2018
Getting Sandy Koufax’s Autograph Was Worth the Risk
By Andrew Malekoff

A painting of Sandy Koufax by Ron Stark

A painting of Sandy Koufax by Ron Stark from a photo of Koufax taken before the start the 1963 World Series, where he struck out 15 Yankees. Photo Credit: /

I am not the rabid baseball fan that I once was, but the start of a new season each year brings me back to 1963, when I was just 12. I was a Dodgers fan and much too young to have appreciated the devastating impact of the team’s 1958 move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles for so many fans.

My summertime ritual was to get up, ride my bike to buy a newspaper at the nearby candy store in my hometown of Maplewood, New Jersey. I headed right for the sports section and the box scores. If Sandy Koufax pitched the night before, my heart pounded in anticipation of the details.

Sometimes I clipped the articles for a scrapbook, spending hours with scissors, paper and Elmer’s glue.

One fall day in 1963, my father told me he had four tickets to a World Series game. The Yankees were playing the Dodgers. I did not get to see Sandy pitch, but I wasn’t disappointed. The Dodgers won 4-1, giving them a 2-0 Series advantage. Nevertheless, the excitement of being at the game and seeing my team triumphant was soon eclipsed.

As my mother, father, younger brother and I exited the ballpark in South Bronx, we passed an open garage that led back into Yankee Stadium. I peered in and spotted a bus. I stopped as my family walked on. As the metal garage door started its slow descent, I knew that this was the moment of truth.

When the garage door was about three feet from the concrete, I hit the ground, World Series program and pen in hand, and rolled inside along with a few other kids.

As a stadium door opened, the first one through was Don Drysdale, who would go on to pitch a shutout in game three. Next was Johnny Podres, who pitched that day, followed by the exciting Maury Wills, who broke all the base-stealing records in the early 1960s.

They signed the back of my program over a full-page ad for Sinclair Dino Supreme gasoline. The ad said, “Try a tankful today. Your satisfaction guaranteed — or your money back.”

I could feel my heart beat harder with each autograph. But where was Sandy?

I learned later that my parents had frantically searched for me, and that someone told them some kids had slipped under the garage door.

Finally, Sandy came through, but he boarded the bus before I could get to him. I was crestfallen.

Faced with another decision, I overcame my inhibition and climbed up the bus stairs. I asked a player sitting in front to pass my program back to Sandy. It came back with his signature. I was soon escorted out of the garage, to my parents’ great relief. I was floating on air. The glow lasted for days.

With each new season, I wonder back what that day and those precious moments and split-second decisions would have felt like if I hadn’t been in it for love, but for the money that a celebrity’s signature might bring. Later, my mom framed the front and back covers together. It hung in my bedroom for decades, well after I moved out. I took it with me to Long Beach after I got married in 1980. It’s out of the frame and I keep it in a night table drawer.

I am so grateful for that day, and for not knowing that an autograph could be worth anything more than a wonderful moment to be preserved for a lifetime.

Reader Andrew Malekoff lives in Long Beach.

Source: https://www.newsday.com/opinion/sandy-koufax-autograph-baseball-memories-1.17722104

Blank Slate, March 25, 2018: Students, activists seeking sensible gun laws deserve our support

Blank Slate, March 25, 2018: Students, activists seeking sensible gun laws deserve our support

by | Apr 2, 2018 | In The Media

Activists in Manhattan (Photo provided by Andrew Malekoff)

On March 24 I was proud to stand with the youth leaders of Stoneman Douglas High School and other youth activists across the U.S. As one of them said on a news broadcast, “Every voice matters.”

They demonstrated that by extending their reach to youth survivors beyond Parkland and broadened the frame to include gun violence in all domains.

Think for just a moment about the value-laden authenticity of these social justice youth warriors as compared to what masquerades as leadership in Washington D.C.

Think about Congress’s reliance on the likes of the NRA, Big Pharma and others for campaign financing and, even closer to home, the unending and sordid political corruption trials in municipalities across Long Island.

We have sunk so low in terms of greed, thirst for power and social dysfunction, that it will take our babies to save themselves.

And, some babies they are!

How long before their enemies try to delegitimize their efforts, even beyond characterizing them as inauthentic “crisis actors,” which only serves to reinforce their resolve?

How long before the tabloids attack them and attempt to rip them apart by manufacturing sordid headlines to discredit them?

How long before the NRA public relations corps attempts to marginalize them as ego-tripping puppets of the left and Hollywood elite, rather than the free-thinkers, born of trauma that they are?

How long? Not long. It’s already happening.

Their detractors cannot differentiate between the teens being resourceful in their partnering with adults and being dependent on them.

They don’t need our leadership. They’ve already eclipsed it. But, they will need soldiers of every generation to support them.

And, let us not forget that they have suffered post-traumatic injury and are grieving.

They’ve vowed not to let this go. We cannot lead or co-opt their revolution.

What we can do is follow and support or get out of the way.

Andrew Malekoff

Executive director of the nonprofit children’s mental health agency North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center in Roslyn Heights www.northshorechildguidance.org

Senators query DFS head on mental health coverage

Senators query DFS head on mental health coverage

by | Apr 2, 2018 | Project Access

Say options are inadequate in the face of higher rates of depression and anxiety

 

In the wake of the Parkland, Fla., shootings, state senators Elaine Phillips, Republican of Floral Park, and Todd Kaminsky, Democrat of Rockville Centre, have renewed their call for an investigation into the lack of adequate insurance coverage for mental health patients. In a letter to Department of Financial Services Superintendent Maria Vullo, the senators called on DFS to investigate the availability of mental health coverage generally, while renewing an earlier call that Vullo direct her department to examine the issue of network adequacy.

Network adequacy means that health insurance carriers will make a sufficient number of doctors available in each specialty. The two senators’ January call for an investigation into network adequacy came on the heels of a report put out by North Shore Child and Family Guidance Center that was sharply critical of the lack of mental health care in most insurance plans, including those available through the New York State of Health.

Almost half of the respondents in the North Shore report indicated that it was harder for them to find appropriate treatment options for mental health or substance abuse problems than for other medical complaints. The report was compiled as part of North Shore’s Project Access, the overall aim of which is to improve access to mental health and addictions care. Its financial support comes from the Unitarian Universalist Fund of the Long Island Community Foundation. The Community Foundation supports a number of social service initiatives.

“Simply put,” Kaminsky wrote, “those with the courage to reach out for mental health treatment are given a hard time by their insurance companies, and there are too few mental health providers. In the wake of last month’s horrific mass shooting, it is imperative that we that we ensure that those who need treatment obtain the services they require.”

“Timely and affordable mental health and addiction care should be accessible to anyone in need,” Phillips wrote in agreement. “As we saw with the tragedy in Parkland, Fla., adequate mental health treatment needs to be easily attainable.”

Respondents to the questionnaire reported a range of negative experiences, from unresponsive or unsympathetic doctors, to an insufficient number of doctors, to long waiting lists to see doctors or therapists. “I work for a school district,” wrote one respondent. (All respondents were promised anonymity.) “We work with families on a daily basis, where they cannot find a provider that will accept their insurance, or they cannot afford the copay. Personally, a family member within my household needed therapy, and we had difficulty finding a provider. And when we did, scheduling was a nightmare, because so many patients were trying to see him. I believe it was because he was one of the few willing to accept multiple insurance [plans].”

Kaminsky and Phillips have requested a review of the procedures by which state agencies assess network adequacy.

“We are living in a time where both mental health and substance abuse disorders are on the rise,” the senators wrote. “In addition, more and more young people are reporting symptoms of depression and anxiety … We are wondering if the criteria currently used may need to be re-evaluated and a re-examination done, as the law provides.”