Missourinet reports that state Sen. David Pearce (R-Warrensburg) has introduced a bill into committee that would “mandate health insurance coverage for Missourians with eating disorders that would cover the diagnosis and treatment of the eating disorder as well as residential, medical, and psychiatric treatment.”

While Pearce’s proposal is capped at $30,000 per beneficiary — to be paid for out of the state’s general fund — it still represents one of the most comprehensive approaches to addressing a public health concern that often goes ignored:

Pearce says funding for the coverage would stem from the state’s heath plan. “The funding, I would assume would come from general revenue. A lot of this would be done by the Missouri consolidated health plan,” he said. “So a lot of that could be taken from existing information, statistics, that the state already has.”

Pearce says that by having this coverage, it can ward off the possibility of long-term hospital stays, or even death, by posing the questions, how much money can be saved in the long run and how many lives can be saved? “Eating disorders is treatable if it’s caught early,” he said. “And how we can save lives and improve the lives of folks, and yet, if we don’t catch it early eating disorders has the number one fatality of all mental illnesses.”

Pearce rightfully calls eating disorders what they are — mental illnesses — but it’s a bit more complicated than that. Eating disorders are extraordinarily complex conditions to treat, as effective regimens address the intertwining physical and mental components of the disease. That’s easier said than done in a health care system that does not assume parity between mental services and more “traditional” treatments. And while Obamacare will require insurance plans to offer some form of mental health coverage as one of its “essential health benefits,” states still have most of the discretion when it comes to determining how generous those benefits will be.

That’s also what makes Pearce’s bill important. Lack of adequate funding for comprehensive eating disorder coverage prevents nine out of ten Americans suffering from the condition from receiving treatment — $30,000 in comprehensive benefits could significantly shift that dynamic in Missouri.

Following last week’s tragic shooting in Newtown, CT, tens of thousands of Americans have signed their names to a petition calling on the White House to “produce legislation that limits access to guns.” Some lifelong gun advocates have even begun to reconsider their stances and call for “common sense” gun safety policies.

Indeed, since gun regulations vary across states, some states currently impose harsher restrictions on getting a driver’s license, qualifying for food stamp assistance, accessing medical services, or even buying a pet than they do for purchasing a gun. In fact, as states passed dozens of new abortion restrictions over the past year, these are just five states where it’s significantly harder to get an abortion than a gun:

1) ARIZONA: When it comes to gun regulations and restrictions, Arizona is one of the most lenient states in the country. In fact, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg hired undercover agents last year to demonstrate just how easy it is to purchase firearms in Arizona without being subjected to a background check. But Arizona also passed one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, requiring women seeking abortions to undergo a 24-hour waiting period, an in-person “counseling session,” and a mandatory ultrasound. The Arizona government also recently launched a misleading website dedicated to educating women about the dangerous decision to have an abortion, even though it is a safe medical procedure.

2) MISSOURI: After state lawmakers loosened regulations for purchasing firearms in 2007, there is no longer any waiting period for gun ownership in Missouri. There’s also no limit to the number of firearms that residents can purchase at one time, and gun owners don’t have to obtain a license or register their firearms. On the other hand, women seeking abortions in Missouri have several hurdles to overcome. Women are required to wait 24 hours before they can have an abortion, make an additional visit to the clinic to receive “in-person counseling,” and confirm that they have not been coerced into the procedure. And if Missouri lawmakers have their way, it could soon be more difficult for women to obtain affordable contraception than it is for them to obtain a gun.

3) MISSISSIPPI: There’s no license or permit required to purchase a firearm in Mississippi. The state also doesn’t require any kind of firearm safety training as a prerequisite to buying or carrying a gun, and does not require handguns to meet safety standards. But while lawmakers in Mississippi may not be particularly concerned about gun safety legislation, they are worried about women’s health clinics. After state legislators passed a restrictive regulation to hold abortion clinics to unnecessary standards — an indirect method of limiting women’s reproductive freedom by targeting abortion providers — the state’s clinics were forced to stop performing the medical procedure. There’s only one abortion clinic left in the entire state of Mississippi, and it may be forced to close in January.

4) TEXAS: Texas does not require a waiting period to buy guns, but it does impose a 24-hour waiting period on women who seek abortions. Texans also don’t need a license or registration for their firearm — but women who are looking for health services rather than a gun could be out of luck, since Texas legislators have been on a crusade to defund the women’s health organizations that provide abortion services. Preventing low-income women from having access to health services at clinics that also perform abortions isn’t enough for Texas Republicans, though — they also want to prevent doctors from even talking about abortion with their patients, although discussing guns would probably be considered fair game.

5) UTAH: Utah imposes one of the harshest restrictions on women who seek abortions, requiring them to wait a full 72 hours before undergoing the procedure. The same isn’t true for purchasing guns, since there’s no waiting period whatsoever for buying a firearm. Utah lawmakers may hope that women end up changing their mind about getting abortion if they’re required to wait several days and attend an in-person “counseling session,” but studies have shown that imposing those hurdles don’t actually impact women’s decisions. On the other hand, there’s evidence to suggest that imposing waiting periods for gun ownership can be an effective safeguard mechanism to provide enough time for background checks to go through, as well as allow for a “cooling off period” in the cases where an emotional altercation may have encouraged one of the participants to obtain a weapon.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon (D) announced today that his state will participate in the optional expansion of the Medicaid program under Obamacare, one of the crucial methods that the health care reform law uses to extend coverage to previously uninsured Americans. An estimated 33,000 Missouri residents will be able to access health insurance thanks to Nixon’s decision to expand Medicaid.

“As Chief Executive for the state, I take my financial responsibilities very seriously,” Nixon said in the statement. “I trust that as others scrutinize the numbers, as I have, they will come to the same conclusion: that we can do the smart thing and the right thing for the people of Missouri.”

Republican governors across the country have been digging in their heels against implementing Obamacare in their states, claiming that covering more of their low-income residents under Medicaid would impose too much of a strain on their budgets — despite significant evidence to the contrary. But a statement from Nixon’s office noted that expanding Medicaid represents a “fiscally responsible move” for his state because the federal government will contribute 100 percent of the costs of expansion for the first three years, and 90 percent or more in the years after that. And on top of that, a report from earlier this week found that the additional funding from the federal government will help spur the local economy by creating 24,000 new jobs in the state in 2014 alone.

Nixon’s decision will help move his state toward implementing the Affordable Care Act after the state’s Republican-controlled legislature has repeatedly attempted to block Obamacare’s implementation altogether. In September, Missouri lawmakers voted to give employers the right to deny their employees coverage for contraceptive services — a method of circumventing Obamacare’s contraception mandate, which requires employer-based insurance plans to cover birth control without a co-pay. And on November 6, Missouri voters passed a meaningless anti-Obamacare ballot initiative to prevent their governor from moving forward with a state-based health exchange, another one of the health law’s tactics for lowering the uninsurance rate. Instead of preventing Obamacare’s implementation in Missouri, that vote actually left Nixon with no choice but to cede to the federal government, which will now step in and set up a health exchange for the state.

The news that Missouri will move forward with expanding Medicaid is especially good news for the state’s hospitals, which stood to lose about $400 million in funding without the Medicaid expansion. Some estimates projected that, if Missouri decided against expanding Medicaid, as many as 40 to 50 percent of rural hospitals in the state could have been forced to close.