Does Your Insurance Cover Addiction Treatment?
At Behavioral Health Centers, we offer quality and effective treatment for alcoholism and other addictions. Let’s take a look at some of the ways we can help you today.
Coverage for Addiction Treatment Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
There are a few major ways in which the ACA is designed to help people pay for addiction treatment. In particular, it reduces treatment costs and expands the benefits of employment-provided healthcare coverage to all individual healthcare packages. Health insurance plans are required to cover addiction treatment regardless of preexisting conditions, and addiction itself can no longer be called a preexisting condition for insurance purposes. It’s an essential health benefit (EHB) under the ACA and must be treated as simply a medical condition.
The percentage of costs these plans will cover depends on the tier of the insurance marketplace at which they’re sold. There are four plan levels whose overall cost coverage goes up in 10% increments, from Bronze plans at 60% up to Platinum plans that cover up to 90% of expenses.
The coverage offered by any of these plans might have certain limitations outside the basic parameters the legislation requires. Some, for example, might cover outpatient programs and detox but might not cover the kinds of intensive inpatient programs that are the focus of Behavioral Health Centers’ facilities.
Some states run their own Health Insurance Marketplace platforms instead of using the federal platform. On these, the available kind of coverage will be partly determined by state-specific rules for Medicare and Medicaid.
Private Insurance Plans
In many states, the law compels these providers to cover certain fundamentals such as the inclusion of mental health services as part of any substance abuse treatment. Under the kind of group plan that some employers offer, if more than 50 employees are covered under the plan, the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act will require that inclusion as a basic standard.
What If You Simply Don't Have Insurance?
You can also, where applicable, talk to your employer. In many states, the law requires employers to help with a certain amount of support for addiction treatment; others might offer such support whether required to or not.
An employer can also be prevailed upon to offer extended leave for treatment to ensure you have a job when you return. It might seem scary to have that conversation: but it’s not as scary as losing the job because you didn’t get the help you needed.
Exploring Your Options at Behavioral Health Centers
On arrival, we provide a dedicated caseworker who can help you work out exactly which services your insurance covers, identify alternatives if your present insurance company doesn’t provide as much support as some alternatives could and determine further resources and plans that can reduce your treatment costs.
Once you’re at ease about the cost of care, your case manager will help guide your registration into detox and stabilization treatment, intensive residential care and our wide variety of other drug and alcohol rehab programs, all administered by a caring and expert team.
Your case manager also helps with a wide range of aftercare programs for peer support, medications, ongoing assessments and private therapy and more. Again, the compassionate staff at Behavioral Health Centers will always work with you to ensure all phases of care are as affordable as possible.
The Costs of Addiction vs the Costs of Rehab
- Substances cost money and can eat up a significant chunk of your income, to the tune of thousands of dollars a year.
- Lost income can result from addiction-related problems or accidents, with the worst-case scenario being the complete loss of employment.
- Health problems can begin to impose their own costs as long-term substance abuse takes its toll on the body, with both financial expenses and deeper consequences for the mind and body results.
Compared with these risks, it’s always worthwhile to seek help for a substance abuse disorder. Don’t let fear of the costs hold you back from finding the better quality of life you deserve, especially now that you know the answer to “does insurance cover rehab”.
