Health care coverage: mental health parity.

Existing law, the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act of 1975, provides for the licensure and regulation of health care service plans by the Department of Managed Health Care and makes a willful violation of the act a crime. Existing law provides for the regulation of health insurers by the Department of Insurance. Existing law requires health care service plan contracts or health insurance policies issued, amended, or renewed on or after July 1, 2000, to provide coverage for the diagnosis and medically necessary treatment of severe mental illnesses, as defined, and of serious emotional disturbances of a child, as specified, under the same terms and conditions applied to other medical conditions. Existing federal law, the federal Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA) , requires group health plans and health insurance issuers that provide both medical and surgical benefits and mental health or substance use disorder benefits to ensure that financial requirements and treatment limitations applicable to mental health or substance use disorder benefits are no more restrictive than the predominant requirements or limitations applied to substantially all medical and surgical benefits. Existing state law subjects nongrandfathered individual and small group health care service plan contracts and health insurance policies that provide coverage for essential health benefits to those provisions of MHPAEA. This bill would require the Department of Managed Health Care and the Department of Insurance annually to report to the Legislature the information obtained through activities taken to enforce state and federal mental health parity laws. Existing law requires specified health insurance policies that provide coverage for outpatient prescription drugs to cover medically necessary prescription drugs and subjects those policies to certain limitations on cost-sharing and the placement of drugs on formularies, among other things. Existing law authorizes a health care service plan and a health insurer to utilize formularies, prior authorization, step therapy, or other reasonable medical management practices, as specified, in the provision of outpatient prescription drug coverage. This bill would require health care service plans and health insurers that provide prescription drug benefits for the treatment of substance use disorders to place prescription medications approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the treatment of substance use disorders on the lowest cost-sharing tier of the plan or insurer's prescription drug formulary. The bill would also prohibit those plans and insurers from, among other things, imposing any prior authorization requirements on, or any step therapy requirements before authorizing coverage for, a prescription medication approved by the FDA for the treatment of substance use disorders. Because a willful violation of the bill's provisions by a health care service plan would be a crime, the bill would impose a state-mandated local program. The California Constitution requires the state to reimburse local agencies and school districts for certain costs mandated by the state. Statutory provisions establish procedures for making that reimbursement. This bill would provide that no reimbursement is required by this act for a specified reason.