New Insurance Rules Mandate Better Coverage for Addiction Treatment
New government rules now require group health care plans and ones provided by state and local governments to provide more coverage for mental illness and treatments for drug and alcohol dependencies.
Policies must have just one deductible for physical and mental illnesses. Previous rules allowed insurance companies to have separate deductibles for medical and surgical expenses, and for mental health and substance abuse treatments.
Insurance companies can no longer restrict coverage for autism, schizophrenia, eating disorders, drug addiction, and alcoholism by limiting outpatient treatment and the number of days allowed for hospitalizations.
These rules go into effect in 2010, and came from the Labor Department, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Internal Revenue Service.
