A key portion of the Affordable Care Act was finalized last week, expanding access to substance abuse and mental disorder benefits.
Whatever your thoughts on "Obamacare" itself, these new rules will likely help millions of Americans find better coverage and care for their mental health needs.
The new rules establish "essential health benefits" standards for insurers so as to give consumers a simplified and consistent way to shop for and choose healthcare plans. Think of it as window stickers on the car lot - they're standardized and all give the same basic information in a layout most can easily understand. The new rules do the same thing for health insurance.
Expanding access to mental health coverage, but at what cost?
Although the new rules taking effect in 2014 do not mandate mental health coverage, they will expand access to them. One of the key portions of the Affordable Care Act was the requirement that insurers not discriminate based on pre-existing health issues. This includes mental health diagnoses and histories of substance abuse when seeking coverage for those conditions.
Because the standards extend to mental health and substance abuse, and because pre-existing conditions cannot be factored when calculating costs, however, opponents to the Act point out that it will add over $100 million in cost to our already expensive healthcare system. Most of that cost will be seen in the premiums offered for these higher-risk coverages, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.
Still, for many this change will mean at least the possibility of getting insurance coverage for diagnoses already in place will be far easier. So for the roughly 62 million Americans without mental health coverage, this could be a boon.
The new rules were published on Monday in the Federal Register and take effect in January of 2014.
