President Bush signed into law the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 on October 3, 2008. Within this piece of emergency legislation is the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (the "Act). The Act seeks to correct the imbalance between the benefits offered for mental health and substance-related disorders under group health plans and the benefits offered for general medical and surgical benefits . This act will apply to group health plans with plan years beginning after October 3, 2009.

Some of the notable changes and/or requirements:

-The definition of "mental health benefits" was revised to now include substance-related disorder benefits

-The same financial requirements are applicable to mental health or substance-related disorder benefits as medial/surgical benefits, such as copayments, deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses

-If plans have a limit on frequency of treatment, number of visits or similar limits they are required to change their current plan to match medical/surgical limits

-Out-of -network coverage must be made available for mental health and substance-related disorders if there is out-of-network coverage for medical/surgical benefits

The Act does not mandate that qualifying health plans have to offer mental health or substance-related disorder benefits. The Act just states that group health plans that do offer such benefits must do so in parity with medical/surgical benefits.

Mental health and substance-related disorders affect a significant portion of the U.S. population. Under the Act, disorders such as alcoholism, drug addiction, autism, bipolar disorder, ADHD, depression, anxiety disorders, and other commonly-diagnosed mental disorders are to be treated equitably by health insurers.