Dr. Keith Humphreys

and then make better decisions for themselves.

Yeah.

Since like 2008 up to the present moment has been...

the best addiction treatment policy we've had as a country.

And that was because 2008 is when parity legislation came in.

This means like Blue Cross, Aetna and all those, when they cover stuff, they have to cover mental health and addiction too at a comparable level.

And those laws have expanded to cover more and more people on the private side.

then on the public side the expansion particularly of Medicaid has become the backbone of a substance use treatment system.

Like in places where I'm from, West Virginia, it's the biggest spender of the addiction treatment system.

That is good, that has made treatment in better quality,

easier to access and because Medicaid is a mainstream healthcare player, it helps integrate addiction care better into the rest of the healthcare system.

It depends on the plan, I don't want to promise anyone in particular, but here's what used to be legal.

It used to be a plan could say your co-payment for an outpatient visit is $5, unless it's mental health or substance use, in that case it's $25.

Or you're allowed to have up to six months of hospitalization a year, unless it's mental health and substance use and you're allowed to have 14 days.

Those kinds of things which made very skimpy benefits are now illegal in almost all plans.

So the odds as a mom or dad when you open up the plan today that whatever you got through your work or wherever will give your kid something that they need is just way, way higher than it's ever been before.

And that was due to advocacy and changing the law and changing the regulations because obviously covering care

It costs money, insurers don't like to cover care, they have to, but they also don't want to.

And so keeping the pressure on, they have to follow the law.

So in that sense, we're in a better place on the private side.