The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) released a report examining the national health care reform law’s impact on individuals with comorbid mental and physical health disorders.  The report notes that individuals with mental illnesses are more likely than those without mental illness to be uninsured and have physical health ailments.  The authors posit that health reform’s expanded coverage will benefit this population, particularly through broader Medicaid eligibility.  The brief suggests that health reform offers policymakers an opportunity to address mental and physical illness comorbidities in a manner that improves care, reduces care fragmentation, and disseminates evidence-based practices for treating comorbid illnesses in routine care settings.

From the report:

In the wake of the passage of national health reform, the nation is focusing its efforts on how to improve quality and efficiency within the health care system. However, expenditures and gaps in care delivery are not evenly distributed throughout the population; only 5 percent of the population account for half of all health care spending (138) and there is considerable variation in quality of care across different conditions and settings (106). Therefore, achieving the goals of improved quality and efficiency will require focusing specifically on subgroups most at risk for high costs and poor quality of care (113).

Full Report: Mental disorders and medical comorbidity (PDF | 543 KB) 

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (2011). Mental disorders and medical comorbidity. Druss, B. and Reisinger Walker, E.