What Obama’s Executive Action Means for Mental Health Funding

The new rule adds to a complex web of laws and regulations developed in the past 47 years, since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gun Control Act of 1968.

President Obama finalized a rule on January 4 that allows health care providers to report mentally ill people to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS).

But Harris said the White House’s approach just “throws more money” at the problem, rather than structurally reforming how mental health care is delivered in the U.S. Lawmakers vowed to fight the changes. Social services agency Provident also supports the increase in funding to health care treatment.

Previously, the privacy rule in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act prevented mental health providers from sharing mental health information.

Local courts typically make the determination whether someone is capable of standing trial or not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity, which also deem an individual ineligible under federal law to purchase a firearm.

“That could be a barn door opened quite wide if an administration really wanted to open it, and they didn’t”, Paul Gionfriddo, chief executive of the mental health rights advocate Mental Health America, told Politico. “Far more often, they are the victims of violence”.

Overall, however, Honberg is optimistic about the focus on mental health.

“What he’s proposing”, said Pickens County Sheriff Rick Clark, “I don’t think it’s going to help like he thinks it is”.

“An unwillingness to find common ground and achieve compromise has been the hallmark of this president’s tenure, and this issue unfortunately is no different”, Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX), a proponent of improved health care programs, said in a statement. As a professional here in our community, what is your impression of the landscape for mental health services here in Sedgwick County?

The Obama administration made it abundantly clear on Tuesday that those with serious mental illness should be reported to the FBI’s database for background checks and prohibited from buying a gun.

Murphy introduced a bill (H.R. 2646) in 2015 that would alter HIPAA to give caregivers and families more access to patients’ health information. Major gun reform – including universal background checks – will be a long-term fight, Murphy said, one that he is fully committed to. Sen.

A mental-health diagnosis by itself does not bar a person from possessing firearms, the administration said, and the rule “does not create a broad permission” for doctors to report information about their patients to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As a licensed dealer, he already does what the law requires and what the president is calling for. “I think there’s certainly heightened interest and concern about mental health on both sides of the aisle in Congress right now”, he said. “The rule specifically prohibits the disclosure of diagnostic or clinical information, from medical records or other sources, and any mental health information beyond the indication that the individual is subject to the Federal mental health prohibitor”.