Medicaid recipients who get services through managed care organizations or alternative benefit plans and those enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program would get mental health and addiction treatment coverage that is comparable to the coverage they receive for medical and surgical care, under a rule proposed by CMS.
A federal law was passed in 2008 to ensure those with insurance received the same level of mental health coverage as medical coverage. However, up until now, the government had only showed how the law applied to commercial insurers. Private health insurers had until Jan. 1 to comply with the parity law.
Limits on mental health coverage have been put into place in a number of states. Under the proposed rule, those limits wouldn't apply to Medicaid recipients who are in managed care plans, which is about 70 percent of the Medicaid population, according to The Wall Street Journal. However, the limits would still apply to those enrolled in Medicaid fee-for-service plans, according to the report.
"Today's release of draft regulation regarding mental health parity and addiction equity is an important step in an ongoing conversation about how best to integrate behavioral health treatment into the rest of the healthcare system," Matt Salo, executive director of the National Association of Medicaid Directors, told The Wall Street Journal.
The proposed rule is open for public comment until June 9.
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