I was excited to read in Thursday’s New York Times about an upcoming study that will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine that looked at whether providing insurance coverage for mental illness equal to that for physical illness would drive up the cost of mental health care. As I have discussed previously on this blog, presently the vast majority of insurance companies do not provide full medical insurance for persons with mental health issues. This becomes extremely relevant to those with acquired traumatic brain injury, as we often see insurance carriers attempting to classify these insureds with a mental disability, therefore enabling them to refuse to reimburse needed medical care. According to the New York Times, the study concluded that if mental health care is properly managed, expanding the coverage of it can improve insurance protection without increasing total costs beyond those paid by insurers that do not offer parity. According to the co-author of the study, Richard G. Frank, professor of health economics at Harvard, “The big winners, in terms of reduced out-of-pocket spending, were the sickest patients, including those who needed hospital care.” I certainly look forward to reading this study when it is published next week.
