With mental health in the forefront as patients demand greater access to psychologists and psychiatrists, the Biden administration in July 2023 proposed new regulations aimed at requiring health insurers to expand their mental health coverage.
The proposal aims to bring insurers into compliance with existing law requiring that they cover mental health benefits in parity with physical health services.
Despite that law, many insured Americans struggle to access mental health care, often because they need a referral or a health plan does not have enough psychologists and psychiatrists in its network, forcing them to go to providers outside of the network and paying significantly more.
It’s hoped that by adding new provisions that would require insurers to regularly assess how well they are complying with the law, it will be easier to receive in-network mental health care. Additionally, the rules aim to eliminate barriers that keep people from accessing such care when they need it.
The Mental Health Parity and Equity Act has been on the books since 2007, but the COVID-19 pandemic provided the spark that ignited a brewing mental health crisis in the country. The sudden demand for counseling services caught insurers off guard with too few providers in their networks.
As well, many people who needed mental health services were unable to get them due to their insurers’ sometimes onerous prior authorization requirements. In announcing the rule, the administration cited an example of insurers approving nutritional counseling for diabetes patients, but not for people with eating disorders.
The regulations — proposed by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor and Treasury — would:
Require health plans to measure outcomes to make improvements. The rules require insurers to regularly analyze their coverage requirements to make sure their insureds have equivalent access between their mental health and medical benefits as required by law. The insurer will need to evaluate:
- How much it pays out-of-network providers,
- How often prior authorization is required, and
- The rate of denials for prior authorization requests.
The goal is to help insurers identify areas where they are failing to meet the law’s requirements and require that they take steps to remedy those shortfalls, such as adding more mental health professionals to their networks or reducing red tape to get access to them.
Stipulate what health plans can and cannot do. The proposed rules will provide specific examples that make clear that health plans cannot use more restrictive prior authorization, other medical management techniques, or narrower networks that make it harder for people to access mental health and substance use disorder benefits than physical medical benefits.
The proposal would require health plans to use similar factors in setting out-of-network payment rates for mental health and substance use disorder providers as they do for medical providers.
The takeaway
The proposed rule is good news for any of your staff that have been having a hard time accessing mental health or substance abuse services.
The regulators are hoping that the legislation achieves their goals of:
- Making mental health care accessible to more people,
- Ensuring that mental health professionals’ pay is comparable to that of physical medicine practitioners, and
- By ensuring comparable pay and boosting demand, attracting more individuals to pursue careers in mental health professions to increase the number of mental health providers.
The proposed regulations still need to be put out for public comment and will likely be changed as the agencies get to work writing the final version.
