Question

For this policy brief, you will pick one health issue to discuss. It should be between 2-4 pages (1,500 words) and must include the sections listed below. The purpose of a policy brief is to give your reader a high-level overview of the issue at hand and then recommend a policy or policies to address the problem. Think of it as a vehicle to provide policy advice to someone who is not an expert in that topic.

1. Pick a single topic (topic is below)
2. No more than 2-4 pages (1,500 words)
3. Policy Brief Template (must include these sections)
   1. Title
   2. Scope of Problem
   3. Policy Options
   4. Policy Recommendation
   5. Reference Page

Health Issue- Enforcing Mental Health Parity

Answer 1

Title: Enforcing mental health parity

Scope of the problem

Mental health parity means equal health coverage to mental health conditions and substance use disorders in insurance plans. However, parity doesn't mean that it will give good mental health coverage. Comprehensive parity requires equal coverage, not necessarily good coverage.

Mental health parity is to ensure that health plans and insurers offer mental health and substance use disorder benefits that are comparable to their coverage for general medical and surgical care.

Traditionally, insurers and employers have covered treatment for mental health conditions differently than treatment for physical conditions. Coverage for mental health care had its own (usually higher) cost-sharing structure, more restrictive limits on the number of inpatient days and outpatient visits and separate health coverage. But now the mental health parity make mental health treatment equal to treatment for other health issues.

This aims to increase access to mental health and substance abuse care.

The Mental Health Parity Act mandates equity in insurance coverage, including both treatment limits (caps on inpatient days and out-patient visits) and financial requirements (cost sharing, deductibles, and out-of-pocket limits), for behavioral health and medical/surgical services.

The new federal law goes further than most previous laws by extending parity to managed care techniques that may not be expressed numerically but may nevertheless limit the scope or duration of services.

An ongoing challenge for patients and clinicians, however, is to navigate the patchwork of parity provisions at the state and national levels. Further complicating matters is the larger health care environment. Although the Congressional Budget Office estimates that adding mental health parity will increase health insurance premiums by less than 0.4% a year, health care costs overall have been increasing dramatically.

Policy options

• Parity is the basic idea that mental health and addiction care are covered at the same level as care for other health conditions.
• The policy ensures that insurance coverage and acess to services and care for mental illness and substance use is equal to the services provided for other medical conditions. Especially in the areas of financial requirements and treatment limitations.
• Determining equivalence of services. Much of the debate in implementing parity is around determining equivalence of services between mental health/substance use benefits and medical/surgical benefits.
• Reducing fragmentation of the health care delivery system
• Health insurance should provide comprehensive mental health coverage without arbitrary limits on treatment.

Recommendations

• State and federal policymakers must stop this discrimination and improve access to quality, affordable mental health care for all by enforcing federal and state parity laws and requiring mental health parity in all types of insurance.
• Become familiar with the regulations in state.Check the mental health coverage as compared to medical illnesses
• integrate and coordinate mental health and substance use care with medical care despite using separate administrators.

Reference

• National Alliance on mental illness
• www.hss.gov
• www.health affairs.org