Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity Task Force Holds Listening Session with Key Stakeholders

This post by Kathryn Martin originally appeared in the HHS’s blog on June 22, 2016.
On June 10th, Secretary Burwell and Office of National Drug Control Policy Director, Michael Botticelli, hosted a listening session to engage stakeholders in a discussion about mental health and substance use disorder parity implementation. Fifteen leaders of organizations representing consumer and provider groups from the mental health and addiction fields shared their perspective and offered recommendations for how to improve awareness of and compliance with the law.
More than 170 million people have better insurance coverage for mental health and substance use disorder care thanks to new coverage and parity protections in the Affordable Care Act, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and Medicaid/CHIP.
The President established the Task Force on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Parity (www.hhs.gov/parity) to build on that progress and to focus federal agencies on realizing these improvements.
Stakeholders spoke of the challenges that consumers and providers face in trying to understand the parity law and whether there has been a violation. Moreover, they conveyed that most consumers and many providers may not know how to get help if they think coverage is not in compliance. They asked the Task Force to focus on enforcement, transparency and simplifying the process and tools for consumers and providers.
As Secretary Burwell noted during the discussion, untreate...

Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - June 23, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Publc Health Source Type: blogs