Parity of Mental Health and Substance Use Benefits with
Other Benefits: Using Your Employer-Sponsored Health Plan
to Cover Services
If you are someone who is trying to figure out how to use your health coverage provided by your employer to pay for your mental health or substance use services – this sheet is for you. Your health plan or health coverage is sometimes called health insurance.
Parity of mental health and substance use benefits
There is now a United States law stating that certain health plans must cover mental health and substance use (MH/SU) services comparably (in a similar way) to medical and surgical care, or what most people refer to as physical health. 1 Many simply refer to the requirement of the law as parity, as we do here.
