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The House health care reform bill rolled out yesterday contains most of the language and provisions of the long-stalled, much-controversial MOTHERS Act. Go to page 1418 of the bill, downloadable here, for the language. An earlier version of the MOTHERS act is here.

Minus the original bill’s prologue about depression in new moms, much of the Act’s provisions are in the House bill, but with slightly softened language. Postpartum depression screening is no longer, in essence, mandatory but is now something that “may” be included in a national education campaign for health professionals and the public. The bill also calls for research on the causes and treatments for PPD, studies of differences in PPD between different ethnicities, “[t]he development of improved screening and diagnostic techniques, Clinical research for the development and evaluation of new treatments.”

So that ought to make Big Pharma and the Act’s proponents happy.

As for the education program, the bill specifies:

“Information and education programs for health professionals and the public, which may include a coordinated national campaign that

“(i) is designed to increase the awareness and knowledge of postpartum conditions; (ii) may include public service announcements through television, radio, and other means; and (iii) may focus on (I) raising awareness about screening; (II) educating new mothers and their families about postpartum conditions to promote earlier diagnosis and treatment; and (III) ensuring that such edu-cation includes complete information concerning postpartum conditions, including its symptoms, methods of coping with the illness, and treatment resources.”

That sounds similar to what critics of the Act have objected to in the past (see Evelyn Pringle and Martha Rosenberg), seeing the Act as disease mongering by pharma companies, so it’ll be interesting to see the reaction this time out.

I’ve learned through bitter experience that it’s best for me not to have an opinion of the MOTHERS Act or to even ask fairly innocent questions about why we seem to have so much PPD these days. But I will point out that I find it odd that the House is using a bill that’s supposed to reform health care access and delivery to fund various research studies which ought to be broken out into NIH’s regular budget funding. These studies aren’t going to affect health care delivery and access and just add to the cost of an already-costly bill. Just my opinion.

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Related posts:

1. Senate Health Care Reform Bill Contains Controversial MOTHERS Act, Abortion Study
2. House Health Care Bill Contains Autism Training Initiative
3. House Health Care Bill Contains End-Of-Life Counseling
4. House Health Care Bill Mandates Calorie Counts At Restaurants Nationally
5. House Health Care Bill Mandates Study Of Mental Health Outcomes of Abortion, Adoption