Higher minimum wages are the last thing those people need. We're talking about the least productive workers. If minimum wage is $20 and their labor is only worth $10 then no one will hire them at all. They will remain dependent on handouts and never have the opportunity to gain real work experience.
Under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008, medical insurers are already required to cover mental health the same way they cover physical health. The issue is not so much with insurers but availability of providers. It doesn't matter whether your insurer will pay the claim if you can't get an appointment with a local psychiatrist in the first place.
Paying people a living wage is not a handout. Raising the minimum wage is not a handout.
These people are working, hard, harder than you do, for way less. These people are being taken advantage of. It's not just fast food workers, it's bank tellers, it's farm workers, it's orderliness and custodians at hospitals, it's the backbone of our society.
What do you get paid to do? I would argue that what you get paid for what you do is more of a handout than raising the minimum wage of a janitor, which isn't a handout at all.
Feel free to insult me if that makes you feel better but it won't solve anything. You can't force private employers to hire unproductive, unskilled workers at wages that make them unprofitable.
A better solution would be to eliminate the minimum wage entirely and instead expand the Earned Income Tax Credit. Basically have negative income tax rates for low income workers. This would cut unemployment and allow those people to start gaining some real job skills.
Under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008, medical insurers are already required to cover mental health the same way they cover physical health. The issue is not so much with insurers but availability of providers. It doesn't matter whether your insurer will pay the claim if you can't get an appointment with a local psychiatrist in the first place.