Also included is a discussion on insurance denials and related resources
NEWSLETTER
Be Part of the Solution
Actions you can take to help your loved one, your family, or your community.
When seeking mental health and addiction care, patients often face obstacles like network limitations and insurance denials. Included here are opportunities for you to:
Raise Awareness: View and share apowerful discussionwith a mother who's son was denied addiction treatment.
Take Action: Improving Access to Affordable Care
Patients and families often have a hard time accessing affordable mental health and addiction treatment.
In-network providers are often limited and may be far away or have long wait lists.
Many insurance plans have "ghost networks," listing providers in the plan directory that are not accepting new patients or are no longer participating in the network.
Why it matters: Patients are often forced to wait or travel long distances for care, pay higher costs for treatment from out-of-network providers, or forgo care altogether.
The Behavioral Health Network and Directory Improvement Act would address these issues by:
Strengthening network adequacy standards for mental health and addiction provider networks, and authorizing the government to issue penalties for non-compliance.
Establishing ombudsman programs to educate and assist consumers.
Requiring federal agencies to establish standards for parity in reimbursement for mental and physical health services to improve network participation by mental health providers.
How you can help: Send a letter to your senators encouraging them to support the Behavioral Health Network and Directory Improvement Act to help ensure access to affordable care.
The Partnership’s Lindsey Vuolo connects with a mother who was denied insurance coverage for her son’s addiction treatment, and discusses how that affected her son’s life. The U.S. Department of Labor joins them to talk about free resources for families facing insurance denials.
