What does “mental health and substance use parity” mean?
Mental health and substance use parity means that benefits coverage for mental health and substance use benefits must be at least equal to that coverage provided for physical health benefits. In other words, all of the financial requirements and treatment limitatios applied to mental healthand substance use benefits may be no more restrictive than for physical health benefits. Historically health plans have applied higher patient-cost-sharing and more restrictive treatment limitations to mental health and substance use benefits than for physical benefits. This new law ends this practice. 3. How is this new law different from the 1996 federal parity law? The Wellstone-Domenici Parity Act amended and substantially increased the mental health benefits protection afforded under the federal Mental Health Parity Act of 1996, which only required parity coverage for lifetime and annual dollar limits and did not apply to benefits for substance use disorders. 4. When does this new parity law tak
