• ISSUES SPOTLIGHT: Mental Health Parity
January 1, 2010 | Nathan Gehlert Starting today, there's a good chance that your health insurance plan will offer better coverage for mental health services. As part of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008, most private sector health plans will be required to provide insurance coverage for mental and addictive disorder services with the same terms as other types of care. In other words, terms such as "reimbursements," "number of visits," "annual and lifetime caps," and "copayments" for counseling, medications, and related mental health services must be the same as treatment for a physical condition or illness. Many insurance policies used to place arbitrary limits on the number of counseling sessions that individuals could obtain, but in 2010 they will no longer be able to do that.