Physical and Mental Health Parity Act, Insurance and Rehabilitation

The Mental Health Parity Act, for example, has increased the speed of reform. It is an unfortunate fact that mental illnesses are not often treated as strictly as physical illnesses. We sometimes ignore the fact that bearing a stigma can damage our psychological fitness, and if our psychological well-being is disturbed, we cannot live a life with physical fitness too. As per P.T., people living with mental disorders feel a humiliation associated with acknowledging psychological health conditions as a natural source of suffering. Sometimes individuals hesitate to discuss the source of their illness, and sometimes they try not to reveal it before others. This means they feel shame about their disease. Obviously, mental disorders are considered and treated as a disease. However, many individuals in American society do not. Individuals who suffer from such illnesses often face racism and intolerance from others who do not acknowledge the implications of the diagnosis. The Mental Health Parity Act, for example, has increased the speed of reform. How do companies deal with employees who have psychological well-being problems? This is the problem we are going to discuss today from A to Z.

The MHPAEA 2008

The MHPA or MHPAEA of 2008 is federal legislation that protects people with mental disabilities from discrimination. This Act is similar to Mental Health Parity Act. It is the only act that understands and talks about the significance of psychological well-being issues and their treatment. This act weights the treatment of psychological well-being issues with the physical health treatments and therapies.

MHPAEA is a federal decree that ensures that people with mental illnesses and addictions are treated equally. Moreover, restricts health insurers and group health plans from enforcing unjust and discriminatory terms and conditions to their members. Benefits for psychological well-being conditions or drug misuse disorders are subjected to undesirable restrictions when weighed against the therapeutic and clinical advantages they provide. 

This law demands that psychological health benefits should not be limited in terms of resources, not annually nor lifetime. 

What is the Significance of this Mental Health Parity Act?

Insurance companies were not expected to provide psychological health insurance as part of their group policies prior to this law. This law made them consider those individuals worthy of the treatment policies who suffer from psychological health conditions. That was because, as the N.E.J.M states, psychological health and addiction care have generally been separated from the rest of medicine. This confusion may have contributed to the stigma that psychological patients have generally faced, as previously discussed. As a result of this deficit, patients and their families were unable to receive much-needed care, requiring them to pay for it out of budget. Even when these disorders are not considered diseases, who is going to treat them publicly and why?

Ambiguities and Deficiency of Attention

The initial legislation of the Mental Health Parity Act was passed by Premier B. Clinton in the ’90s that had no provisions for drug addiction and alcohol addiction problems, as per the N.A.M.I. President G.W. Bush signed the OAPRA, twelve years later, which puts the same limits on substance abuse disorders as it does on medical and surgical privileges. So, there was a need to extend the circle for those who were suffering from the hidden mental diseases and were in stigmas of the illnesses. Mental Health Parity Act plays an important role to fulfil this deficiency.

Why Was it Necessary to Extend the Original MHPA?

It not only did not cover drug abuse problems, but it also had a variety of gaps that employers and insurers used to avoid having to standardize policies. For instance, policies may be restricted to just ten clinical check-ups for a case of significant anxiety (even though it may be a lifetime disease for the majority of victims, as per the JCD), and insurers could charge a higher consultation fee for a psychological well-being consultation than for a physical issue, without breaching the rules. So, MHPA was not enough to maintain a weight between psychological well-being disorders and physical health disorders. 

The gap was filled when the MHPA and Mental Health Parity Act was expanded into the MHPAEA in 2008. This act helped many patients with psychological well-being issues get in the way of recovery explicitly with the help of government policies.

Are People Aware that Psychological Well-Being and Substance Abuse Disorders are Covered by Health Insurance? 

Since few Americans are conscious that their psychological well-being rights are guaranteed by law, such violence was (and continues to be but to a lesser degree) inevitable. Even though twenty-seven percent of the total population of the USA has received psychological well-being care services at least once in their lives, according to a study conducted by the APA in 2014, only fourpercent of the total American population are aware that the MHPAWA exists in reality. In North America, psychological well-being disorders are the leading cause of disabilities, with more than forty-one million victims who are suffering from some type of mental disorder in the United States alone. Even having a practical and straightforward significance for those who want to be treated against their mental disorders, MHPAEA is not so common in people of America. They are unaware of the fact that this law can change the lives of those who are addicted to some substance abuse. In order to make them benefitted from this law, the government and concerned authorities of America need to spread the good word of the act. 

The American Psychological Association, citing data from the SAMHSA, stated that approximately eleven million individuals from the population of the USA had unmet psychological health care needs, highlighting the importance of legislation including the MHPAEA and Mental Health Parity Act.

Some Prohibitions, Coverage, and Limitations in the MHPAEA

The Mental Health Parity Act is encouraging in that it includes all psychological disorders and chemical dependence conditions covered by an insurance plan; However, in order to be fair to insurers, insurance companies are permitted to deliberately exclude specific treatments of check-ups from coverage (either from the medicinal/clinical range or from the psychological/drug abuse range). However, the exclusions must be stated clearly in the insurance corporation’s documents. So, that there should be no misunderstanding.

Despite the MHPAEA’s broad reach, it does not mandate huge community health policies providing companies to provide such services; instead, it specifies that if issuers do offer psychological disorders treatmentand drug addiction treatment policies, their coverage cannot be restricted as compared to policies for surgical or medical benefits. That is not fair. This means that surgical or medical benefits can be higher than psychological illness treatment benefits covered in the policies plans.

According to the legislation, Mental Health Parity Act in the interests of fairness, compensation for psychological disorders or drug abuse conditions cannot have higher financial standards than coverage for any other therapeutic or clinical benefits. Similarly, care restrictions (number of clinical visits, the specific timing of service, etc.) should not differ from medicinal/clinical coverage treatment limitations. If an insurance provider’s policy covers out-of-network medicinal and clinical services, it should also provide psychological disorders treatment and drug addiction services out-of-network. That would be beneficial for the victims of psychological issues.

The MHPAEA does not extend to small private businesses with 50 or fewer workers who have group health plans. Non-federal governmental plans with less than 100 workers are also exempted from the MHPAEA’s requirements. Other exemptions include community health plans and health benefits dependent on higher costs, as well as subsidized by self, non-government employers opting out of MHPAEA provisions. 

History of MHPAEA

According to the SAMHSA, the MHPAEA, when paired with the ACA of 2010, benefited sixty million people from the population of the USA who wanted behavioral health assistance. It has also developed initiatives in which local agencies – states and neighborhoods – can provide psychological well-beingrehabilitation education, including avoiding adverse psychological well-being environments and fostering.

The Journal of BHSR estimated that coverage of psychological and social health care would be increased with the passage of time and according to the increasing needs as an outcome of the ACA and Mental Health Parity Act.

The Departments of HHS, Labor, and Treasury jointly released a “concluding law” on the MHPAEA in 2013, describingsupplementary consumer rights such as:

• Confirming that the Act extends to in-between levels of care in in-house rehabilitation or severe emergency environments. 
• Ensuring that the Act holds to all regional standards, various types of hospitals, and different types of healthcare systems.
• Assuring that health programs meet the requisite standards of accountability when it comes to the interests of those who participate in them. 
• Closing a gap that required insurance providers to make exceptions for some assistance that did not meet clinically satisfactory treatment standards, health professionals recommended that the exception was excessive, ambiguous, and permitted patients to be abused, so it was removed as part of the final decision.

United States government expects that by doing so, they will be able to complete a strategy to make care services for individuals with co-occurring psychological disorders and alcohol abuse conditions as effective as possible while still bridging the gap between the rehabilitation and understanding of the psychiatric disorder and other categories of medical distress.

The Sec. of HHS, Kathleen Sebelius,in her statement, announced the last decision, the purpose of the MHPAEA is to make psychological disorder treatment and drug addiction rehabilitation services cheap and open to all residents of the USA.

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, expressed her decision to become the final decision maker in a statement proclaiming the overall aim of the Mental Health Parity Act was to meet the needs of everyone and give them the possibility of mental health parity in the USA.

Citations

• [1] “Psychological well-being & Stigma.” (August 2013). Psychology Today. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [2] “The Psychological wellbeing Parity and Equality Addiction Act.” (n.d.) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [3] “Moving Beyond Parity.” (September 2011). New England Journal of Medicine. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [4] “The Psychological wellbeing Parity Act of 1996.” (n.d.) Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [5] “Preventing Recurrent Depression: Long-Term Treatment for Major Depressive Disorder.” (2007). Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [6] “Psychological wellbeing Parity” (April 2014). Health Affairs. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [7] “Few Americans Aware of their Rights for Psychological wellbeing Coverage.” (May 2014). American Psychological Association. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [8] “Does Your Insurance Cover Psychological wellbeing Services?” (n.d.) American Psychological Association. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [9] “Health Financing.” (n.d) Substance Abuse and Psychological wellbeing Services Administration. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [10] “How the Affordable Healthcare Act and the Psychological wellbeing Parity and Addiction Equity Act Greatly Expand Coverage of Behavioral Health Care.” (October 2014). Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research. Accessed April 16, 2015.
• [11] “Administration Issues Final Psychological wellbeing and Substance Abuse Disorder Parity Rule.” (November 2013). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Accessed April 16, 2015.