Insurance Parity and Access
TAC supports reforms to ensure that insurance companies cover treatment for serious mental illness (SMI) with psychosis at parity with other serious chronic health conditions, and that government oversight is sufficient to ensure compliance with federal law.
Although the United States has taken steps toward requiring equitable insurance benefits for mental health, parity with physical health is far from realized. Limitations, loopholes, and poor enforcement of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) are well known and documented, with the federal departments responsible emphasizing in a 2024 fact sheet that disparities have “persisted and grown” since the MHPAEA’s enactment in 2008. Similar to public insurance, private insurance has for decades escaped oversight for overtly discriminatory practices that have contributed to a mental health treatment system in crisis. Reform will require organization and oversight systemwide, with lawmakers and stakeholders prepared to challenge an industry that may protect its own profits but costs the public immensely when services and medications are denied or limited.
Recommended Actions
- Expand enforcement of parity law at the federal level.
- Reform the MHPAEA to require all insurance companies to cover mental health.
- Expand enforcement of parity law at the state level using model parity legislation.
Download our full policy position with citations to learn more.