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Parity: How to fight for insurance for your child's mental health services
Author(s) -
Knopf Alison
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
the brown university child and adolescent behavior letter
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1556-7575
pISSN - 1058-1073
DOI - 10.1002/cbl.30140
Subject(s) - mental health , equity (law) , addiction , parity (physics) , health insurance , health care , group insurance , actuarial science , business , psychiatry , psychology , insurance policy , general insurance , income protection insurance , political science , law , physics , particle physics
If your child needs mental health services, you have probably struggled with how to pay for them, especially if you have health insurance. Many mental health care providers don't accept health insurance, however. Put another way, insurance doesn't pay them. Under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA), however, insurance companies are required to treat mental and substance use disorders (SUDs) the same way they treat medical/surgical disorders. In other words, if they pay for diabetes treatment, they have to pay for mental health treatment.