Clinton touts plan for mental health

Trump readies immigration speech

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center left, leaves the home of Marcia Riklis, center right, following a private fundraiser in Southampton, N.Y., Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, center left, leaves the home of Marcia Riklis, center right, following a private fundraiser in Southampton, N.Y., Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016.

SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. -- Hillary Clinton rolled out a comprehensive plan Monday to address millions of Americans coping with mental illness, pointing to the need to fully integrate mental-health services into the nation's health care system.

Donald Trump's campaign, meanwhile, geared up for two big speeches in the coming week: one Wednesday in Arizona on immigration policy and one Saturday at a predominantly black church in Detroit to address issues pertaining to minority-group communities.

Clinton's multipronged approach to mental illness, released on the second of three days of campaign fundraising in the Hamptons, is aimed at ensuring that Americans would no longer separate mental health from physical health in terms of access, care and quality of treatment.

"We've got to break through and break down the stigma and shame. We've got to make clear that mental health is not a personal failing. Right now it's our country which is failing people with mental-health issues," Clinton said.

The Democratic presidential nominee's agenda would focus on early diagnosis and intervention and create a national initiative for suicide prevention. If elected, Clinton would hold a White House conference on mental health within her first year in office.

Clinton's proposal would also aim to enforce mental-health parity laws and provide training to law enforcement officers to deal with people grappling with mental-health problems while prioritizing treatment over jail for low-level offenders.

The former secretary of state held a town-hall-style meeting by telephone with stakeholders Monday during a three-day fundraising tour in the Hamptons on New York's Long Island. The policy rollout would overlap with a Clinton plan to address drug and alcohol addiction, which she campaigned on in Iowa and New Hampshire after hearing frequently about the problems from voters.

Clinton noted that suicides were at their highest levels in years and people were dying from connected health conditions that "too often go undetected and untreated." She said that during her campaign "it has seemed like a floodgate has opened" from parents, students, veterans and others sharing their stories of mental-health problems.

The federal government estimated in 2014 that about 43.6 million adults in the U.S. had mental illness in the past year, or about 1 in 5 adults age 18 and over. It estimated nearly 10 million adults suffered from serious mental illness.

An estimated 17 million children in the U.S. experience mental-health problems, including 1 in 5 college students, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. Nearly 1 in 5 veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan experienced post-traumatic stress or depression.

Clinton's campaign said the plan would attempt to integrate the nation's health care system to create a more seamless way of providing both medical and mental health treatment to patients.

It would expand the reimbursement systems for collaborative care models under Medicare and Medicaid that aim to treat patients through a team of health care professionals, including a primary care doctor, a care manager and a behavioral health specialist.

It would also be helped by a Clinton proposal to boost funding for community health centers that she announced earlier in the summer along with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, her rival in the presidential primary.

Money for the centers, a priority for Sanders, was increased under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Clinton's plan would make the money for the centers permanent and expand it by $40 billion over the next decade.

By the time Clinton wraps up her fundraising swing through Long Island's East End today, she will have headlined six to nine events -- including a dinner hosted by singers Jimmy Buffett and Jon Bon Jovi, according to sources familiar with her fundraising schedule.

'CEO at Work'

Trump, after a week in which his campaign fielded questions over his policy on immigration, is expected to clarify his stance in a Wednesday speech.

Until recently, there was no doubt about where the Republican presidential nominee stood on illegal immigration. He planned to build a wall along the border with Mexico, the bill for which Mexico would foot, and an estimated 11 million people living in the country illegally would be forced to leave.

But over the summer, Trump began suggesting in private conversations with Hispanic leaders that he might be open to softening his stance.

On Aug. 20, he convened a private round-table discussion among Hispanic lawmakers and business leaders, leaving some with that impression. The day after, campaign manager Kellyanne Conway said his position on deportations was "to be determined." Conway herself has said that she's been pushing Trump to get more specific.

Additionally, there has been debate within his campaign about illegal aliens who haven't committed crimes beyond their immigration offenses. Trump has focused lately on deporting people who are in the U.S. illegally and who have committed crimes. But whom Trump considers a criminal remained unclear as of Monday.

Trump's supporters said questions about his recent talks are overblown. His running mate, Mike Pence, described him as "a CEO at work" as he consults with various stakeholders.

"You see someone who is engaging the American people, listening to the American people," Pence said Sunday on CNN. "He is hearing from all sides."

And Stephen Moore, a conservative economist who has worked with Trump to shape his tax and economic plans, said the vagueness on policies is by design.

"We want to talk about the big visionary stuff. We don't want to have a big debate about this loophole, that loophole," he said. "This is a campaign, it's not a write-up of a tax bill in the Ways and Means Committee."

But Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under George W. Bush, said the confusion that now exists about Trump's plans for immigration underscores "the risk in electing someone whose candidacy is based on his personality and image, as opposed his experience and policy knowledge."

While Trump could succeed as a "big-picture, set-the-tone, drive-the-direction and move-the-government" kind of president, Fleischer said, that would require him to surround himself with a knowledgeable and capable staff.

"But the lesson in how he's run his campaign -- and frankly in how he's run his businesses -- doesn't give you confidence that he would surround himself with a lot of capable people," he said.

On Saturday, Trump will visit the Great Faith Ministries in Detroit, a predominantly black church in the heart of the city, said Pastor Mark Burns, a Trump supporter who arranged a meeting between Trump and the church's leader, Bishop Wayne Jackson.

The campaign is sharpening its efforts to court black voters. At the church, Trump will speak about education, unemployment and safety, Burns, who is black, said in a campaign statement released late Sunday.

Trump will "give an address to outline policies that will impact minorities and the disenfranchised in our country," Burns said in the statement. "I see, as I have seen, the heart and compassion Mr. Trump has for all Americans, which includes minority communities whose votes have been [taken] for granted for far too long."

Burns has emerged as a vocal supporter for Trump within the black community, frequently appearing on cable networks and introducing Trump at his rallies. In recent weeks, Trump has made a pitch to blacks in his speeches, though he has done so in front of mostly white audiences.

"The black church is a very powerful institution," Jackson said in an interview. "Mr. Trump wanted to speak to the Christian African-American community as a whole. And he reached out to us. We thought it was a very good gesture of him to try to come into our community and explain to us his policies."

Jackson is the founder of the Impact Network, which claims to be the "only African-American founded and operated Christian broadcast television" network in the U.S.

Jackson, who identified himself as a Democrat and said he is undecided on how he'll vote in November, said that he believes it is "important that Mr. Trump be able to speak to our community and be able to lay out his plan for our community."

Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas of The Associated Press; by Kevin Cirilli of Bloomberg News; and by Laura Figueroa of Newsday.

A Section on 08/30/2016

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