HHS Seeks Funding to Promote Mental Health Parity, Free Visits

The Biden administration’s proposed budget includes an ambitious mental health care agenda that would step up enforcement of mental health parity, change medical necessity standards and require expanded mental health benefits. Though the budget is only a proposal and must pass Congress, where it will be heavily modified, the document arrives at a moment when legislators in both parties have made expanding access for behavioral health care a central element of their responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and opioid misuse epidemic.

The administration’s proposed 2023 HHS budget in brief includes several notable behavioral health proposals that would impact commercial insurers. That list of proposed policies includes stepped-up behavioral health parity enforcement, more funding for Medicare and Medicaid behavioral health benefits and a requirement that all health plans — including commercial group plans backed by employers — provide three behavioral health visits per member every year without charging any cost sharing.