Your Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Benefits

"Imagine your child is experiencing anxiety and depression and has suicidal thoughts. Or you are recovering from an eating disorder and need treatment at a residential facility. Then you’re told you have to pay deductibles and copayments that your workplace health coverage normally covers for other medical claims.  Before you know it, these out-of-pocket costs are adding up to thousands of dollars you just don’t have. 

Unfortunately, these are real scenarios that benefits advisors at the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration have heard about recently.

But the good news for these workers – and you − is that a federal law called the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act provides protections. In most cases, the financial requirements (such as copayments, deductibles, coinsurance or out-of-pocket maximums) and treatment limitations in a health plan must be comparable for both physical and mental health/substance addiction benefits.

In these two cases, our benefits advisors contacted the workers’ benefit plans to make sure that they complied with the act. And both employer-provided plans agreed to pay the benefits to which the workers are legally entitled.."
Mental health & substance abuse