Just before Christmas, small-business groups joined big businesses to help defeat a Congressional provision that would have expanded existing law, forcing group health plans to treat mental health coverage the same as medical coverage in companies with more than 50 employees. The legislation, promoted by Sens. Paul Wellstone (D-MN) and Pete Domenici (R-NM), would have forced group health plans to charge patients the same copayment for visits to general physicians and therapists, among other provisions.

Passage would have benefited employees, but business groups saw it as an intrusion that would have removed cost controls such as annual limits on the number of visits to a therapist. “It’s another government mandate at a time when we’re already experiencing health-care inflation,” says Kate Sullivan, health-care policy director for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Although plans for companies with fewer than 50 employees would not have been affected, National Small Business United president Todd McCracken also opposed the bill’s passage. As the bill passed the Senate but not the House of Representatives, he expects another attempt to expand the regulations in 2002.