America's Health Insurance Plans: Proposed Rule Hinders Affordable Access to Critical Mental Health, Substance Use Disorder Care

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 -- America's Health Insurance Plans issued the following news release:

Everyone deserves access to effective, affordable, and equitable mental health care and addiction services. Mental health care is health care. AHIP underscored these priorities in a comment letter to the Departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Labor in response to proposed rule on mental health parity.

In the letter, AHIP reaffirmed the importance of mental health parity:

"We agree that coverage of mental health and substance use disorder (MH/SUD) care must be on par with medical and surgical care. During the fifteen years since Congress enacted MHPAEA, health insurance providers have worked diligently to ensure mental health parity is reflected in benefit design and to educate our enrollees about the requirements and responsibilities of MHPAEA."

AHIP also shared its concerns with the proposed rule:

"The proposed regulations have significant legal, policy, and operational flaws and should not be finalized. Perhaps more importantly, the proposed rules will not achieve the goals of increasing access to mental health care or substance use disorder treatment. Instead, we urge the Departments to take this opportunity to gather stakeholder feedback about the areas that remain unclear for achieving effective compliance with MHPAEA and use that feedback to inform a future NPRM that adheres to statutory authority while avoiding the unintended consequence of hindering the availability, affordability, or safety of mental health care and substance use disorder treatment."

Finally, AHIP highlighted the actions health insurance providers are taking to improve access to mental health and substance abuse care for Americans:

"Since the enactment of MHPAEA in 2008, health insurance providers have introduced many innovations and improvements to expand access to MH/SUD services. These efforts include reaching out to more members, especially those at high risk, expanding telehealth availability, maximizing and expanding behavioral health networks, integrating behavioral health with physical health care, and reducing stigma."

Click here (https://www.ahip.org/resources/ahip-comments-on-requirements-related-to-the-mental-health-parity-and-addiction-equity-act) to read AHIP's comment letter.

Click here (https://www.ahip.org/issues/mental-health) to view more AHIP resources on mental health and substance use disorder.

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Original text here: https://www.ahip.org/news/press-releases/proposed-rule-hinders-affordable-access-to-critical-mental-health-substance-use-disorder-care