Striving for Equality for Mental Health Coverage
By Moe Keller, Mental Health America of Colorado
Several months ago, a grassroots group of peers, advocates and provider organizations met to discuss mental health parity laws in the United States and Colorado. Much interest was shown regarding the work of former Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who has been holding public hearings in several states to highlight the lack of full implementation of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, the federal parity law passed by Congress in 2008. This federal law requires large group health insurance plans, if they offer mental health coverage, to offer such coverage equal to what they offer for other physical illnesses.
This group, made up of 40 grassroots agencies, formalized itself as the Colorado Coalition for Parity. We agreed to sponsor and invite Congressman Kennedy to come to Colorado to hold a public mental health and substance use disorders parity meeting here. This hearing was held at the Denver Art Museum on Thursday, January 10 and was attended by more than 300 people. Parents and individuals who have a behavioral health condition expressed their difficulties in accessing treatment; providers outlined difficulties with payment and other barriers to administering treatment; and public policy advocates outlined the efforts and obstacles in Colorado in implementing both the federal and state parity laws.
By outlining the intricacies of mental health and substance use disorders parity in Colorado, this event acted as a spring board for continued conversation on how to resolve these barriers in Colorado, and advance the full implementation of parity. Fortunately, Colorado has adopted a health insurance benchmark plan as the minimum standard of health care for the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange, as required by the Affordable Care Act. This benchmark acts as a minimum standard of health care, including mental health care and substance use disorders, for all private health insurance companies in Colorado to adopt. One complication we experience is that one of the Colorado state parity laws from 1997 applies to the small group market, (49 or fewer employees), while the other state parity law, passed in 2007, applies to the large group market only (50 or more employees). Neither applies to the individual market, which is a required offering to Colorado citizens once the insurance exchange is open in 2014.
Thus, while we are well underway in our efforts to establish a solid health care plan, confusion still reigns as Colorado tries to align our two state mental health parity and substance use disorders mandates with the federal mental health parity law. Now that we have identified and articulated the specific difficulties we are facing, the Coalition is prepared to move forward with the discussion of and action steps on how best to resolve these problems so that the state can fully implement mental health and substance use disorders parity.
Should you wish to become more involved in addressing this topic, please contact Megan Marx at [email protected] or or Moe Keller at [email protected].
