The U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor (DOL), and Treasury Departments on Tuesday released proposed rules to bolster the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) of 2008 and remove obstacles to behavioral healthcare access.
The rules propose several amendments to the 2013 MHPAEA final regulations, as well as provisions that would establish the content requirements of the Non-Qualitative Treatment Limitations, or NQTL, comparative analyses required under amendments to MHPAEA included in the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (CAA, 2021).
“Today’s rules show the Biden administration’s continued effort to implement the landmark parity law,” said NABH President and CEO Shawn Coughlin. “We’re hopeful these changes will do much to eliminate the illegal restrictions and barriers to behavioral healthcare that exist today, nearly 15 years after the law passed.”
The three departments also released a Technical Release on NQTLs that outlines principles and seeks public comment to inform future technical guidance about the application of proposed data collection and evaluation requirements to NQTLs related to network composition that the rule proposes.
Along with the proposed rules, the departments released the 2023 MHPAEA Comparative Analysis Report to Congress that the CAA, 2021 requires. The report includes information about the agencies’ enforcement efforts and identifies plans and issuers that received final determinations of non-compliance with MHPAEA.
The White House released a fact sheet about the rule and DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration posted all the related documents here.
NABH will seek feedback from members and submit comments about the proposed rules and Technical Release.
