Mental Health coverage?

Toya Braskett: My thinking is that the insurance company can decline to cover mental health treatment given that they draw up the policy in the first place. There's no law that I know of (in the US) that requires an insurance company to cover anything specific. There are some health treatments that the Federal government will allow for tax deductions, and mental health is most often covered. (Similarly, alternative treatments may also be not covered, depending on the treatment type.) In my opinion, that you were given false information regarding your policy sounds like it is grounds for legal action. Since you in good faith placed a claim based on what they told you, I feel that they should cover your bills up to when you were told otherwise. However, I'm not a lawyer, so that's a lay opinion. Much of the reason why mental health is treated differently from other health issues is the stigma that mental health is somehow quite different. Even though a tonne of research has! indicated that many mental disorders are actually physical in origin (such as neurotransmitter imbalances), there is still the viewpoint that "it's all in the head". (Well, it is, but not in the way that they mean.) Even if it is a behavioural issue, it's still a health issue, but many groups are slow to adopt that. Even if insurance does cover mental health, it's often in a different category from other health issues....Show more

Eliseo Luma: Yes, and the Mental Health Parity Act passed last year was a step in that direction. Republicans blocked it for about 10 years, but it finally passed. Prior to that, insurance companies didn't have to cover mental health costs and medicine under the same provisions as any other health problem.There is still a lot of room for improvement. HMO's love to deny claims, and as you said, a mentally ill person is going to have a very hard time shuffling through all of the appeals paperwork. They count on that....Show more