WASHINGTON (CN) — The Biden administration announced Tuesday a new push to pressure insurance companies to improve access to mental health and substance abuse benefits.
President Joe Biden said the Covid-19 pandemic highlighted the need for better mental health care coverage and treatment options. Less than half of adults with a mental illness received treatment in 2020, Biden said.
“Mental health care is health care,” he said. “It’s essential to people’s well-being and to live a full and productive life.”
The White House released a set of proposed rules Tuesday building on 2008 legislation that sought to require insurers to cover mental health treatments the same as other health care.
Congress updated the legislation in 2020 to require companies to conduct analyses of their plans to ensure that access to mental health and substance abuse treatments are not more restrictive than other benefits. President Joe Biden’s proposal, which still requires a public comment period, would direct insurers to also evaluate the outcomes of their coverage rules.
“Despite the repeated bipartisan efforts aimed at mental health parity, insurers too often make it difficult to access mental health treatment, causing millions of consumers to seek care out-of-network at significantly higher costs and pay out of pocket, or defer care altogether,” the White House said in a statement.
The White House said the evaluation would examine a provider’s network, payment for out-of-network providers and how often prior authorization is required and its rate of denial. Such analysis, the administration says, will show where plans are failing to meet legal requirements and thus must improve their plans.
Biden said insurers “make it far too difficult” to get mental health care treatment and companies’ networks of providers are inadequate, causing people to pay higher costs for out-of-network care.
“It shouldn’t be this way,” Biden said. “It doesn’t need to be this way.”
The proposal also would toughen restrictions on prior authorizations and narrow networks that make it harder for people to access treatment. It also would close a loophole that exempted plans offered by state and local governments.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “some insurers have been gaming the system” and called the proposal “a major step in our work to ensure that Americans get the help they need.”
“Mental health is a growing problem that touches every corner of the country,” she said.
The departments of Health and Human Services, Treasury and Labor will oversee the regulation, Jean-Pierre said.
Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow said insurers must treat “health care above the neck the same as health care below the neck.”
“We know that funding behavioral health care like any other health care works,” Stabenow said at an event at the White House. “Step by step we are transforming our health care system together.”
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