The Manistee Friendship Society moved to a third-floor suite in the Briny building at 50 Filer St. in Manistee in February 2021.
Chip Johnston
Cassandra Kamaloski
A small library at the Manistee Friendship Society provides its members some reading material.
Nate Miller, owner of Manistee Tire, explains how to use a jack while teaching Manistee Friendship Society members and friends how to change a flat tire in September. The Manistee Friendship Society’s mission is to provide advocacy and assistance to those suffering from a mental illness through peer-support. Its services include life skills enhancement.
MANISTEE — Two bills going through the Michigan Senate that would change the funding structure of local mental health service providers have drawn criticism from mental health providers in the Manistee area.
Centra Wellness, which serves both Manistee and Benzie counties, is among service providers who are highly critical of SB597 and SB598. 
The bills were introduced by Michigan Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey. Their language implies that there would be third party contracts to private organizations outside of local mental health services, and would automatically enroll patients into an account where they would receive a kind of expense account, and failure to pay may result in penalties to the enrollee. 
One section of Senate Bill 597 notes the following: “…the enrollee’s employer, and private or public entities on the enrollee’s behalf,
can be deposited to pay for incurred health expenses, including, but not limited to, co-pays. The account shall be administered by the department and can be delegated to a contracted health plan or a third-party administrator, as considered necessary. “
Another section of Senate Bill 597 reads: “The department shall ensure that each enrollee receives quarterly statements for his or her account that include expenditures from the account, account balance and the cost-sharing amount due for the following months. The enrollee shall be required remit each month the average co-pay amount calculated by the contracted health plan into the enrollee’s account. The department shall pursue a range of consequences for enrollees who consistently fail to meet their
cost-sharing requirements, including, but not limited to, using the MIChild program as a template and closer oversight by health plans in access to providers.”  
The bills can be found by going to legislature.mi.gov/ and searching by number.
Both Senate bills would take public funding from community mental health service providers and redirect the funding to private organizations — at least according to local mental health service providers.
In an email to the News Advocate, Centra Wellness’s Executive Director Joseph “Chip” Johnston commented on the legislation.
“It will cripple us and end virtually all our prevention activities with the schools and the senior centers, as we would be forced to move to a fee-for-service payment arrangement versus a monthly ‘capitated rate,” Johnson said.
A monthly capitated rate is a defined, per-patient payment for each individual enrolled in a capitated insurance plan. For example, a provider could be paid per month, per patient, despite how many times the patient comes in for treatment or how many services are needed.
A fee-for-service model is when the patient would pay every single time they come in for services. 
Johnston noted that Medicaid is a large amount of Centra Wellness’s funding and that the changes in Senate Bills 597 and 598 would practically bankrupt them. “Medicaid is 90% of our funding and would leave us a statutory shell unless we signed a contract with the mostly out-of-state health plans,” Johnston said.
He notes that the bills would significantly increase their rates and prevent them from operating in the current form as a governmental agency.
“We would most likely not be able to sign a contract because as a governmental agency we can only accept contracts that meet our rates. Furthermore, the overhead from the Northern Michigan Regional Entity (that pays us now) is only 3.5% and the health plans are allowed 15% by law, which some are in violation of that threshold. So effectively we would have our funding best case scenario cut 11.5%,” Johnston wrote.
Johnston noted that rural counties often have few or no mental health providers and that the bills would make things even worse. Centra Wellness is one of the few providers in the northwest Michigan area. 
According to its website, “Centra Wellness Network is the publicly funded Community Mental Health Service Provider for Manistee and Benzie counties. In collaboration with providers and community partners, Centra Wellness Network serves more than 1,200 individuals annually. Most of these individuals are insured through Medicaid or have no insurance coverage. We strive to enhance freedom to help individuals lead a meaningful life through quality behavioral health care, leadership, promoting individual wellness and teamwork within our community.”
Johnston continued in his explanation of his opposition to the bills.
“Most rural counties, the health plans have no viable mental health providers of any kind in their area and the Community Mental Health Service Providers system covers this responsibility. We are no exception here in Manistee and Benzie counties,” he said. 
Johnston questioned the wisdom of taking the vast majority of funding from what he said is the only local service provider and giving it to a different organization that has no roots or accountability to the area. 
“Furthermore, the funding that we at Centra Wellness Network get, approximately $20 million in total for 24/7 community mental health care, is counted as county revenue sharing to both Manistee and Benzie counties to the tune of about $9 million and the number is $1.5 billion statewide. Because of these bills, the legislature would have to replace the funds which would now go to private entities (the health plans) instead of to the counties,” Johnston said.
He added that the bills would cause a loss of local control.
“The local community mental health (service providers) taskmasters will now be the health plans instead of the county commissioners and systems such as the sheriff’s office and the court system,” Johnston said. “Who would address the issue of a CMH not providing the services the community needs or is asking of them? Private health plans out-of-state or in Southfield, Michigan? Rural CMHs will be decimated beyond repair and our jails and state hospital systems will be overrun.” 
Cassandra Kamaloski, executive director of the Manistee Friendship Society, notes how the legislation could impact people who have already suffered a lot during the pandemic. She noted some of the issues of the bill in an email to the News Advocate. 
“I am no expert on Senate bills 597 and 598. But, what I can tell you is if there is no funding through our local community mental health for preventative care or peer-run services like ourselves, I don’t know what that will look like for the future of our organization,” Kamaloski said in an email.
According to its website, “The Manistee Friendship Society is a 501c3 nonprofit organization in Manistee County. Since 2002, we have been a safe place for socialization, support, education and activities for adults living with various degrees of mental illness. “
Kamaloski noted that many individuals in the county use their services. 
“We have around 300 adults who utilize our services in Manistee County at this time,” she said. “Those services are to be extra support for people who are recovering from a variety of different issues.”
Kamaloski said people need all the support they can get right now.
“The world we’re living in right now can be scary,” Kamaloski continued. “There has been so much change around us the past two years. There’s a lot of fear and anxiety surrounding this pandemic and what we have been living through.”
She also said the pandemic is not the only reason that people are having mental health issues. She noted the Manistee Friendship Society gets a lot of support from the Centra Wellness Network.
“There are so many things that can affect our mental health. Learning skills and tools to help someone live the happiest healthiest life that they can, can be life changing. But also help them with those everyday basic needs such as housing, food, life skills. We do all of that and more. We wouldn’t have been able to do what we do without the support from Centra Wellness Network over the years,” Kamaloski wrote.
Kamaloski talked about the importance of collaborations with different networks across communities. 
“When we work collaboratively with those organizations around us to help someone in need, it builds a stronger support system for the
people that we serve. Having that connection with our local community mental health has had a tremendously positive effect on the members of our center and the way we are able to help them. And we are very grateful for that,” she said.
She said people need “the best care and support that they can get, and I feel that is through not privatizing community mental health. We want to make it about the people, not the money. “
Jeff Zide is a University of Missouri and California State University, Northridge graduate with both a B.A. and M.A. in Journalism. He is originally from Los Angeles but has roots in Michigan on his father’s side from the Detroit area. He previously worked as a general assignment reporter, photographer and photo editor for the Columbia Missourian, and as a digital producer for WILX-TV in Lansing.

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