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

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..."

Mental health and substance use

Economic Chcracteristics of Households in the United States:2008-2012

Find data on median household income and selected benefits by households for the periods 2008-2012.
Household Characteristics

How Social Security Benefits Are Computed: In Brief

"With $812 billion in benefit outlays in 2013, Social Security is the largest program in the federal

budget. It provides monthly cash benefits to retired and disabled workers and their family members as well as to the family members of deceased workers. Currently, there are about 58 million beneficiaries. Under current law, Social Security’s revenues are projected to be insufficient to pay full scheduled benefits after 2033..."

Social Security benefits

Federal Benefits for Veterans, Dependents and Survivors

"Veterans of the United States armed forces may be eligible for a broad range of benefits and services provided by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). Some of these benefits may be utilized while on active duty. These benefits are codified in Title 38 of the United States Code. This booklet contains a summary of these benefits effective Jan. 1, 2013. For additional information, visit www.va.gov..."
veteran benefits

Benefits.gov
"Benefits.gov (formerly GovBenefits.gov) was launched in an effort to provide citizens with easy, online access to government benefit and assistance programs. Eight years after its initial launch, GovBenefits.gov underwent a major redesign and became Benefits.gov. However, the program's mission remains the same: reduce the expense and difficulty of interacting with the government while increasing citizen access to government benefit information.

The site's core function is the eligibility prescreening questionnaire or "Benefit Finder." Answers to the questionnaire are used to evaluate a visitor's situation and compare it with the eligibility criteria for more than 1,000 Federally-funded benefit and assistance programs. Each program description provides citizens with the next steps to apply for any benefit program of interest.

At the time of the site's launch in 2002, it featured 55 programs, representing the ten original Federal agency partners. Today, the website now includes over 1,000 programs representing 17 Federal partners. For an in-depth review of our activities, take a look at Benefits.gov: A Progress Report to Citizens (2008), a summary of our mission and efforts to serve citizens."