WASHINGTON — Foreshadowing tough negotiations ahead, business groups warned a key House panel last week that Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy’s bill to improve health insurance for the mentally ill could drive employers to limit coverage.

A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee also heard from boosters of the bill cosponsored by Kennedy and Rep. Jim Ramstad, R-Minn. But the session crystallized sharp differences between their approach and the Senate’s approach to “mental health parity” — legislation that requires insurance of mental illness to be offered on an equal footing with coverage of other maladies.

One chief sponsor of the Senate bill is the Rhode Island Democrat’s father, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who has already won committee clearance of his bill for consideration by the full Senate. The elder Kennedy secured support from leaders of the business lobby and the mental-health lobby by putting leaders of both sectors together for compromise talks while the bill was written.

In the House health subcommittee Friday, Edwina Rogers, who represents a large group of U.S. employers that provide health coverage, seized on one of the most controversial provisions in the Kennedy-Ramstad bill, a clause that mandates coverage of a broad schedule of mental conditions recognized in certain federal health insurance plans.

“Must employers pay preposterously high rates to treat imagined detriments like jet lag, shyness, or other ailments treated with ‘folk’ remedies or possibly unnecessary medications from unaccredited professionals?” Rogers said in her prepared testimony.

Congressman Kennedy has defended his bill’s mandate for coverage of a wide array of conditions by arguing that insurers have often discriminated against certain mental illnesses. The Senate bill, by contrast, allows insurers to set restrictions on covered illnesses — with the assent of some leading mental-health advocates. But there is disagreement within the mental-health lobby on this and other differences between the House and Senate bills.

Business skeptics of the House bill also criticized the provision that would allow individual states to mandate mental-health coverage more generous than what the federal bill requires.

“Rather than leaving plan sponsors at the mercy of various state laws, Congress could choose to pass a mental-health parity law that preempts conflicting state laws, giving employers clear guidance on how to be compliant on a national level,” Rogers said. She expressed preference for the Senate version that lets the federal law preempt such state mandates.

With this year’s legislative clock ticking, the House subcommittee’s hearing was another step on the path toward possible enactment of the bill — Kennedy’s signature issue, and the focus of much of his legislative energy since he began his recovery from alcoholism and addiction after a car accident last year that involved prescription drug use.

He has won the support of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and other top-level leaders. But with a crowded legislative schedule, the House has lagged behind the Senate on mental-health parity, with no firm date as yet for sending the Kennedy-Ramstad bill to the floor.

Kennedy has expressed hope, however, that the support of his leaders will propel it through the House this summer. The Senate version, cosponsored by such key Republicans as Senators Pete V. Domenici, of New Mexico, and Michael Enzi, of Wyoming, has cleared a key Senate health committee and may be considered this summer by the full Senate. That could clear the way for House-Senate negotiations that could produce a bill for the signature of President Bush — a supporter of mental-health parity — this year.

If the measure lags until next year, Patrick Kennedy has expressed the worry that election-year politics could jeopardize its chances. In his prepared testimony last week, Kennedy alluded to the implication of mental illness in the 32,000 U.S. suicides each year. How many, he asked, would “be starting families, contributing to their communities, holding jobs, and realizing their potential if only they had access to treatment?”

Kennedy also acknowledged his own struggle with bipolar disorder and addiction. “People might say that there is a component of personal responsibility here, especially with addiction,” he said. “That’s true. I’m working hard every day at my recovery, and it’s reasonable to ask of me. But it’s also true that we don’t deny insurance coverage to people genetically predisposed to high cholesterol who eat fatty foods. We don’t deny insurance coverage to diabetics who fail to control their blood sugar.”

jmulligan@belo-dc.com