• Mental/Behavioral Health Outpatient Services
  
• Mental/Behavioral Health Inpatient Services
  
• Substance Use Disorder Outpatient Services
  
• Substance Use Disorder Inpatient Services
  

Because of the Essential Health Benefits, individual health insurance plans must also cover certain types of drugs. Some of the categories of drugs insurance companies must cover include anti-depressants, mood stabilizers, and medication assisted treatment for substance use disorders. However, insurance companies do not have to cover every drug in each of these categories.

Your insurance company can still put reasonable limits on Essential Health Benefits, such as only covering services performed by an in-network provider or only covering services if they are medically necessary, but it is critical to know that your health insurance company cannot impose less favorable benefit limitations on mental health and substance use disorder benefits than on physical health benefits.  This means your benefits must be the same in terms of:

• What you pay: Co-pays, co-insurance, deductibles, and out-of-pocket maximums;
  
• How much treatment you can get: Limitations on services utilization, such as limits on the number of inpatient days or outpatient visits that are covered;
  
• The use of management tools, such as prior authorization requirements;
  
• Which doctors you can see: coverage for out-of-network providers;
  
• The criteria and process the insurance company uses to determine what is considered medically necessary treatment.
  

This is because of a federal law called the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act. It can be difficult to know if your health insurance company is following this law, so look for these red flags:

• Do you have a higher co-pay for a behavioral health services than you do for physical health?
  
• Do you have limits on how many times you can see a behavioral health provider, but you don’t have limits or have different limits on how many times you can see a physical health provider?
  
• Do you have to ask your insurance company for permission (called prior authorization) to access behavioral health services, but you don’t for physical health services?
  
• May you see an out-of-network doctor for physical services, but not behavioral health services?
  
• Does your insurance company say it will not pay for behavioral health services your doctor says you need?
  
• Does your insurance company make you try outpatient behavioral health services before it will pay for inpatient behavioral health care?
  
• Has your insurance company refused to pay for substance use disorder treatment in a residential treatment facility because they said it wasn’t “medically necessary”?
  

These aren’t the only warning signs for possible violations of this law, but these are obvious red flags you can look for. If you think your insurance company is making it more difficult for you to access behavioral health services than physical health services in any way or have questions about this requirement, visit the Pennsylvania Insurance Department’s Consumer Services Bureau or call their hotline at 1-877-881-6388.