The federal government released a document detailing “Requirements Related to the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act.” This document was developed, in part, to provide greater clarity to health plans and health issuers on how to respond to parity disclosure requests, which were previously mandated by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021. Last year, the Departments (Treasury, HHS, and US Department of Labor) requested public feedback on MHPAEA and received over 9500 comments. The key tenets of MHPAEA include that treatment limitations for mental health/substance abuse (MH/SUD) shall be no more restrictive than substantially all treatments for medical/surgical care (MED/SURG), and there shall be no treatment limitations that pertain only to MH/SUD.
