Unintended Consequences of Mental Health Parity Rule Jeopardize Americans’ Access to High-Quality Care

Our nation’s mental health crisis touches nearly all of us and the demand for mental health care has skyrocketed. Yet, barriers to quality, affordable care continue to be an obstacle for patients across the nation.

The big picture: Specific shortcomings in mental health care have been exacerbated in recent years. Patients, employers, and policymakers are exploring innovative ways to facilitate better access to care, including growing the number of in-network behavioral health providers by 48 percent, with 89 percent of plans actively recruiting more mental health care providers, according to a survey of plans and issuers. While employers are doing their part to respond to these needs, more must be done.

Earlier this year, Protecting Americans’ Coverage Together (PACT), a coalition of business voices dedicated to strengthening employer-provided coverage, released policy recommendations to modernize mental health care by expanding access to telehealth, strengthening the provider workforce, and better integrating care.

However, the final rule updating how the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) is applied will likely have negative impacts on the availability of quality care, adding red tape and lowering standards for providers that could lead to less robust mental health care, not more. The rule will create significant operational challenges to demonstrate compliance with MHPAEA, taking focus away from ongoing efforts by employers to expand mental health benefits for their employees.

Zooming in: While well-meaning, this final rulemaking will have unintended consequences on mental health treatment and lead to poorer health outcomes. The final rule will:

• Lower the standards of care for admitting mental health care providers and facilities into networks, impacting patient wellbeing.
• Reduce innovation in behavioral health coverage by undermining current flexibility in benefit design, thereby limiting value- and measurement-based approaches that help patients choose the providers and modalities that meet patients’ specific needs.
• Increase costs on American families by emphasizing volume of care over quality and focusing on complex, high-volume data submissions that do not increase access to care, thereby raising premiums for employers and employees.

Bottom line: Our nation’s mental health system is difficult to access and significantly understaffed. Policymakers should prioritize workforce recruitment and training to meet the rising demands from patients, expand access to telehealth services­­—which continue to play a tremendous role in meeting Americans’ mental health care needs—and better integrate treatment of mental and physical health care conditions, which are often interrelated. To read more on PACT’s proposals, click here.