A bill that would require insurance companies to cover treatment for mental illness in South Carolina is a step closer to a full airing in the General Assembly.

After an emotional — sometimes nasty — public hearing, the House subcommittee on insurance on Wednesday passed a pared-down version of a Senate bill that offers coverage for nine mental disorders.

Attempts to pass a state law adding mental health coverage to standard insurance policies have failed since 1996.

In a compromise forged Wednesday, insurance coverage for the mentally ill would be limited to a total of 105 days a year. Key lawmakers insisted a cap was the bill’s only chance of passage.

In the end, mental health advocates gave in.

“Let’s get this bill out, move it on,” urged Rep. Robert Leach, R-Greenville. “This is the most important bill we could pass.”

Led by the S.C. Chamber of Commerce, strong opposition to the bill surfaced from business leaders, forcing legislators and mental health advocates to spend hours groping for a compromise.

The bill would require insurance coverage for bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, schizophrenia, adolescent and childhood depression and several other disorders.

It also directs the S.C. Department of Insurance to calculate how much the new coverage adds to the cost of insurance premiums over time.

Because of a compromise reached two weeks ago in the Senate, the House bill would not offer insurance coverage for alcohol and substance abuse, which touched off more dissent at Wednesday’s hearing.

“When you don’t treat substance abuse, you pay for it on the medical side,” said Bonnie Pate, a representative of S.C. Share, a mental health advocacy group, and S.C. Faces and Voices for Recovery, a new substance abuse advocacy group.

Rep. Skipper Perry, R-Aiken, was the only legislator on the six-man subcommittee to vote against the compromise bill.

“This amendment guts the bill,” he said. “You can compromise things out of existence.”

Others could not get past the discrimination they said the bill continues to foster against the mentally ill.

“You would never tell somebody with a heart condition, ‘You can only go in 10 times a year, and if you make it, fine; if you don’t, too bad,’• ” said Joy Jay, executive director of the Mental Health Association of South Carolina.

“We didn’t want hard limits on inpatient and out-patient days,” said Dave Almeida, executive director of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in South Carolina. “That’s not what we came to do, and it’s not parity.”

Subcommittee chairman Dan Tripp, R-Greenville, who authored the amendment capping treatment, said he absolutely would not support the bill without the caps.

“It will be defeated without this addition,” Tripp said.

A study by The State newspaper of 2004 campaign finance reports showed Tripp received more than half of his campaign donations from insurance companies.

His opposition to uncapped coverage for the mentally ill was based on his concern for costs to consumers, he said, not the insurance industry.

“I resent the question.”

Reach Burris at (803) 771-8398 or rburris@thestate.com