costs of mental health parity

[Larry M]

What has been your experience with respect to your group medical costs as a result of the mandated mental haealth parity?

[Guest jamesfdavis]

To comply with the Federal law and do no more, less than 1/2 of 1 percent of total medical plan cost.

[Larry M]

James,

Thank you for the response.

Now the "tough" question -

what are the cost increases if mental health benefits are required to have the same copays, reimbursements, limitations, etc. as other illnesses?

[one jurisdiction has mandated this extremely broad benefit.)

[Guest jamesfdavis]

Larry,

I haven't played with that one lately, but let me try a couple of suggestions:

- If you have access to Tillinghast or a similar model, see what it produces.

- Also, get your client's MH utilizaiton from its carrier and play some what-if games with it. For example, if (1) current MH utilization is 10% of total claims, and (2) full parity increases MH claims by 30%, then total costs go up 3%. When you get the utilization data, have the carrier separate it by in-patient, out-patient and chemical dependency.

I notice from your profile that you're from LA. You might remember a contrary view to cost increases that came out of UCLA some months ago; namely, full MH parity was almost cost-neutral becsuse of savings in other areas and the elimination of MH claims masking as physical illnesses in current plans.

Jim