Final Mental Health Parity Regulations: Revised Standards, Plan Fiduciary Certification, Comparative Analyses, and More

BARBRI

This CLE webinar will provide benefits counsel and advisers with guidance on overcoming challenges in ensuring compliance with the recently released final Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) rules and requirements for plan sponsors and insurers. The panel will discuss the requirements of MHPAEA for health plans that provide mental health and substance abuse disorder (MH/SUD) benefits, new standards for "meaningful benefits" and nonquantitative treatment limitations (NQTL), comparative analysis requirements, ERISA disclosure requirements, DOL enforcement of parity violations, and best practices for ensuring compliance with MHPAEA rules.

Description

On Sept. 9, 2024, final MHPAEA regulations were released providing significant challenges for plan sponsors in ensuring that their health plans remain compliant. In addition to the strict requirements under the final MHPAEA regulations, health plans providing MH/SUD benefits must ensure compliance with CAA requirements and recent federal regulations.

All group health plans and insurers that provide MH/SUD benefits must comply with parity rules, with limited exceptions. Benefits counsel and advisers must address the risks to plan sponsors and insurers by reassessing current health plans, adhering to the new final MHPAEA rules and disclosure obligations under ERISA, and confronting other issues that result in DOL or HHS audits or class action lawsuits.

Under the 2021 CAA, plan sponsors and insurers must perform and document a comparative analysis of the design and application of NQTLs and the duty to disclose this analysis and related information to the DOL or HHS (or participants and beneficiaries) on request. The final regulations amend existing provisions and provide new requirements for NQTL comparative analyses as mandated by the CAA. In addition, the final regulations also encompasses new standards for determining "meaningful benefits" under the regulations.

Listen as our panel discusses the legal requirements of the parity rules under the MHPAEA regulations, CAA requirements, ERISA disclosure requirements, recent DOL and HHS enforcement of parity violations, and techniques for maintaining compliance and handling DOL and HHS health plan audits and plaintiff lawsuits.

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