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Posted June 19, 2025 Reviewed by Jessica Schrader
In 2008, Congress passed the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act to help ensure that insurers treat mental health and substance use disorders with the same seriousness as physical ailments. But now, more than 15 years later, Washington is signaling it may walk away from that promise entirely. In a recent court filing, the administration announced it would pause enforcement of a 2024 federal rule clarifying and strengthening the parity law. It has further signaled it may rescind it altogether.
This shift threatens years of progress in mental health advocacy, potentially undoing the mandate that insurers offer “meaningful” coverage of mental health issues with clear compliance and enforcement standards. It comes at a time when our country is still battling a youth mental health crisis and a looming caregiving transfer, as aging seniors become less able to support adult-age children with a range of challenges and diagnoses.
For more than 30 years, I have served as a mental health attorney, guiding families of loved with serious mental illness and substance use issues through our complex mental health care system. This work often encompasses helping families secure benefits to cover the escalating costs of care. I’ve seen firsthand how the 2008 parity law didn’t sufficiently prevent clinically inappropriate denials of coverage, delayed authorizations or arbitrary program terminations to the severe detriment of individuals’ health and wellbeing. Such injustice drove the push for stronger enforcement measures, now declared merely optional by our federal government.
What comes next is as obvious as it is devastating: more insurers will likely avoid paying for critically needed mental health care, creating endless demands for families as they desperately try to maintain their coverage amidst their other urgent responsibilities. But the impact won’t end there. Our nation could see heightened stress on community services providers, emergency departments, law enforcement and jails. Costs will shift to U.S. taxpayers, who may pay a premium for the system’s dysfunction. And far more lives could be lost to suicide.
This is an intolerable turn of events that will cause significant harm in communities across the country. As our nation’s representatives too often forget, mental illness is an equal opportunist that strikes at individuals representing every geography, background, income level, and political affiliation.
In this manner, taking care of our own means lobbying for a reinstatement of parity enforcement. Only then can those afflicted by mental illness breathe easier, directing their energy and resources away from insurance fights and toward more meaningful endeavors.
Carolyn Reinach Wolf is a mental health attorney guiding families through the complex landscape of legal issues that impact individuals with serious mental illness and/or substance abuse.
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The brightest way to shine is by being fully, imperfectly yourself.
Self Tests are all about you. Are you outgoing or introverted? Are you a narcissist? Does perfectionism hold you back? Find out the answers to these questions and more with Psychology Today.
