State parity laws and access to treatment for substance use disorder in the United States: implications for federal parity legislation.

ABSTRACT:

Importance

The passage of the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and the 2010 Affordable Care Act incorporated parity for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment into federal legislation. However, prior research provides us with scant evidence as to whether federal parity legislation will hold the potential for improving access to SUD treatment.

Objective

To examine the effect of state-level SUD parity laws on state-aggregate SUD treatment rates and to shed light on the impact of the recent federal SUD parity legislation.

Design, setting, and participants

We conducted a quasi-experimental study using a 2-way (state and year) fixed-effect method. We included all known specialty SUD treatment facilities in the United States and examined treatment rates fr

SUBMITTER: Wen H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4047825 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature