What is the health insurance Parity Act?
What is the health insurance Parity Act?
The Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) is a federal law that generally prevents group health plans and health insurance issuers that provide mental health or substance use disorder (MH/SUD) benefits from imposing less favorable benefit limitations on those …
What does parity mean in insurance?
Parity is the Law Health insurance plans CANNOT have higher co-payments and other out-of-pocket expenses for your behavioral health benefits than they do for other medical benefits.
Does mental health parity apply to Medicare Advantage plans?
Medicare and Medicare Advantage plan carriers. coinsurance for mental health/substance use treatment must be the same as for medical/surgical treatment. For Medicare Advantage plans, since the law requires actuarial equivalency, these insurers can still apply specialty co-pays for mental health treatment.
What is a state parity law?
Parity, as it relates to mental health and substance abuse, prohibits insurers or health care service plans from discriminating between coverage offered for mental illness, serious mental illness, substance abuse, and other physical disorders and diseases.
What are the parity diagnosis?
When a plan has parity, it means that if you are provided unlimited doctor visits for a chronic condition like diabetes then they must offer unlimited visits for a mental health condition such as depression or schizophrenia.
Which states have parity laws?
The states with true parity are: Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Kentucky, Minnesota, Missouri, New Mexico, Utah and Virginia. California is slated to join them under a law signed in October by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
What is a parity diagnosis?
Who enforces the Mental Health Parity Act?
Commissioner Lara
Commissioner Lara acts to enforce recently signed landmark state mental health and substance use parity law. SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.
What is mental health parity Compliance Act?
This bill revises the mental health parity rules to require private health insurance plans that offer both medical and mental health coverage to prepare a comparative analysis of nonquantitative treatment limitations (NQTLs).
What does mental health parity law require?
California’s Mental Health Parity Act, as amended in 2020, requires all state-regulated commercial health plans and insurers to provide full coverage for the treatment of all mental health conditions and substance use disorders. Not limit benefits or coverage to short-term or acute treatment.
Which states have telehealth parity laws?
Only 22% of states have telehealth parity laws (Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Tennessee, and Vermont).
What is mental health parity testing?
Mental health parity describes the equal treatment of mental health conditions and substance use disorders in insurance plans. If the health insurance plan is very limited, then mental health coverage will be similarly limited even in a state with a strong parity law or in a plan that is subject to federal parity.