As the 117th Congress concludes, CAMFT and its Medicare Coalition have made progress in advancing the Medicare bill that would allow Marriage and Family Therapists to become Part B Medicare providers.  A version of our Medicare care bill made it all the way to the Congressional floor, which is further than recent years.  While historically, the Democrat-led Congress has supported our Medicare efforts more favorably; mental health has become a bi-partisan issue with greater awareness and acceptance from all parties.  Accordingly, we believe that our efforts will quickly move forward under the new leadership make-up of Congress in 2023.   

In addition, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) re-issued a cost estimate of our Medicare bill from $1.1 billion over ten years lowered to $902 million, a decrease of $180 million over the previous score. An important point that we continue to advocate on is that the CBO score does not consider savings that may come from the participation of MFTs in the Medicare system (I.e., lower hospitalization and incarceration rates).   

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