Rules Spell Out How Insurers Must Cover Mental Health (one in four Americans seems high to me)

From The Wall Street Journal:

Five years after Congress required insurers to cover mental-health and medical problems equally, the Obama administration on Friday issued regulations on how the law should be implemented.

The long-awaited final rule caps decades of efforts by psychiatrists, patients and other advocates to broaden coverage for the estimated one in four Americans who suffer from mental illness or substance abuse. It also ends mounting criticism from lawmakers who say the delay has allowed insurers to continue to impose barriers to care. 

 

The final rule, issued jointly by HHS, Labor and Treasury departments, clears up points of confusion left by the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, which passed with broad support and which bars large group health plans from charging higher co-payments or deductibles for mental-health benefits or imposing more restrictions on those plans than they do on medical coverage.
 

The Affordable Care Act, in turn, requires that individual and small-group plans sold on the new insurance exchanges include mental-health benefits. Together, the laws are designed to extend mental-health coverage to more than 62 million Americans who didn't have it before, according to administration estimates.
 

The final rule makes it clear the so-called parity law covers facilities such as psychiatric day programs and stays in rehabilitation centers, which insurers sometimes didn't include. If health plans cover intermediate care for medical problems, they must cover mental-health and substance-abuse treatment centers, too.