Proposed bill could limit insurance coverage for mental health and substance abuse
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A proposed bill could eliminate coverage mandates for mental health and substance abuse treatments under employer-provided insurance in Arkansas.
HB 1420 was introduced in the Arkansas House on Feb. 5 by State Rep. Trey Steimel (R-Pocahontas) and co-sponsored by State Rep. Justin Boyd (R-Fort Smith).
The bill would repeal requirements for insurers to cover drug, alcohol and mental health treatments, as well as certain rehabilitation services. It would also end funding for the Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool (CHIP) and reduce state oversight of mental health coverage.
If HB1420 passes, insurance providers would no longer be required to offer or make alcohol or drug dependency treatments under employer-provided insurance.
Currently, Arkansas Code § 23-79-139 requires insurers, hospitals, medical service corporations, and health maintenance organizations to provide coverage for the treatment of alcohol and drug dependency.
If repealed, it would:
Remove mandated coverage for services under the Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool (CHIP).
Eliminate state-established requirements for the coverage of hospital care and prescription drugs.
Discontinue funding for the Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool (CHIP).
End enrollment procedures and eligibility criteria for CHIP.
Terminate the requirement for the state to provide access to CHIP for eligible individuals.
Free school breakfast bill advances in Arkansas legislature
CHIP (Comprehensive Health Insurance Pool) in Arkansas provides health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions who have been uninsured for at least six months.
It operates alongside the federal Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) and is funded by federal money. The program offers lower premiums and is available to about 2,500 people in the state.
CHIP in Arkansas is funded through premium taxes and assessments levied on insurance providers.
Arkansas Code § 23-86-113 currently mandates minimum mental health benefits for group accident and health insurance policies or subscriber's contracts. If repealed:
Remove the requirement for group insurance policies to provide inpatient, partial hospitalization or outpatient benefits for mental illness.
Eliminate the obligation for insurers to cover services from hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, outpatient psychiatric centers, physicians, psychologists or community mental health centers for mental illness.
Repeal rules preventing insurers from imposing limits on deductibles, lifetime maximum payments or payment limits for smaller employers (50 or fewer employees).
Remove restrictions on the disclosure of mental health information without written consent, except in certain circumstances such as litigation, reinsurance or underwriting.
Eliminate the requirement for insurers to provide more extensive mental health coverage than the minimum required.
Repeal the mandate for insurers to offer coverage for services rendered by licensed professional counselors in employer-provided insurance.
Additional Arkansas constitutional amendments filed in legislature
Arkansas Code § 23-99-508 currently allows healthcare insurers to provide optional coverage for health services used in the treatment of mental illnesses. If repealed, it would:
Remove provisions allowing insurers to cover services like intensive case management, community residential treatment programs, or social rehabilitation programs.
Repeal the allowance for healthcare insurers to provide coverage for physical rehabilitation or durable medical equipment not generally used in the treatment of serious mental illnesses.
Eliminate the provision permitting healthcare insurers to use common utilization management protocols, such as preadmission screening or prior authorization, for mental illness services.
Remove the option for healthcare insurers to comply with the terms of this subchapter for educational remediation regarding mental illness treatment.
Under MHPAEA, insurers must provide mental health and substance use disorder benefits on par with medical benefits, with no more restrictive financial or treatment limits. They must also document non-quantitative treatment limitations.
The Affordable Care Act mandates these services as essential benefits in individual and small-group plans.
Read the full proposed bill below:
FTPDocumentDownload
The bill's status is 'Read the first time, rules suspended, read the second time and referred to the Committee on INSURANCE & COMMERCE- HOUSE' as of Feb. 12.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CNBC
8 hours ago
- CNBC
47. Abridge
Founders: Shiv Rao (CEO), Zack LiptonLaunched: 2018Headquarters: Pittsburgh, PennsylvaniaFunding: $462.5 millionValuation: $2.7 billionKey Technologies: Artificial intelligence, generative AIIndustry: Health carePrevious appearances on Disruptor 50 list: 0 Skyrocketing rates of burnout among doctors during the pandemic highlighted a huge problem and patient risk. Abridge offers a generative AI platform that is designed to reduce physician burnout levels, a note-taking tool that doctors can rely on during conversations with patients, saving them valuable time that too often has been sucked up by documentation. "After I see a patient, I have to write notes, I have to place orders, I have to think about the patient summary," Abridge founder Dr. Shiv Rao told CNBC at a 2024 Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference. The Abridge technology, Rao said, "allows me to focus on the person in front of me — the most important person, the patient — because when I hit start, have a conversation, then hit stop, I can swivel my chair and within seconds, the note's there." Abridge's platform is able to structure these notes into draft medical records in outpatient, inpatient and emergency medicine settings. Doctors can then double check these generated visit summaries and medical orders before signing off on them. But Abridge is more than just a transcription tool. The platform is also able to match medical issues with insurance billing codes, along with drafting medical orders. With a feature called Linked Evidence, the information sources used to generate Abridge's medical summaries can be found and verified by physicians. In 2024, Abridge announced a new health system enterprise customer nearly every week, according to a report by Contrary Research. Some of Abridge's most recent customers include Mayo Clinic, Duke Health, UNC Health and Johns Hopkins Medicine. The company has partnered with Nvidia to further develop Abridge's ability to understand multilingual conversations between doctors and patients. The software is now able to recognize almost 100 languages. Abridge says that physicians who use its platform at River Health have seen as much as a 55% decrease in burnout. Burnout levels have come back down to pre-Covid levels, according to American Medical Association data, but it remains a huge issue in healthcare. In 2024, approximately 43% of physicians reported burnout, which was down from over 48% in 2022. Physicians are also at a higher risk for burnout compared to other U.S. workers, according to a study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Abridge is just one of the many companies trying to make a name for itself in the booming market for AI medical scribing tools. Competition for Abridge ranges from other startups like Freed and Suki, to tech giants like Microsoft's Nuance Communications, which recently launched an interface update available in the U.S. and Canada. Fellow Disruptor Rad AI also offers written summaries as part of its AI tools for radiologists. "It'll be incumbent upon us to make sure that we're able to demonstrate differentiation," Rao told CNBC. "So far, we've had good luck these last few years doing that."
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
I'm a pediatric heart doctor. Medicaid cuts put half of Kentucky kids at risk.
As a pediatric cardiologist, my specialty is treating children's hearts, but as a pediatrician, I also recognize that surrounding each heart is a child. My job is to take care of both. Part of my job includes having hard conversations with expecting families about their child's abnormal heart, often trying to describe the complex heart diagnosis with a poorly drawn sketch on a sheet of printer paper. Through teary eyes and tissues in a claustrophobic exam room, I watch as plans for baby showers and nursery décor are quickly replaced by talk of heart surgery and hospital stays. When this diagnosis pulls the rug out from under these families, I hope to offer a soft landing place, a team of specialized pediatric providers to take care of these children as they undergo heart surgery — sometimes, in the first week of life. The reality, too, is that as families worry about their child's health, many are also often worried about the cost of care. This is a fear no family should face when it comes to getting the care their child needs. Gerth: Shouldn't police only violently assault people who commit crimes? | Opinion Many of these children will need access to specialized providers throughout their life to help them grow and thrive. Luckily, Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — here in Kentucky, called KCHIP — serve as the backbone for caring for children with special health care needs, and approximately half of children I care for with heart disease rely on these programs for specialized care. Yet, right now these programs are at risk for sweeping cuts as Congress negotiates the budget. Any proposed funding cuts to Medicaid and CHIP would place these children at risk, and so many more in our state and across the country. I wish that these conversations I had with families were a rarity. However, heart disease that children are born with is the most common birth defect, occurring in almost 1% of births. Approximately a quarter of children born with abnormal hearts will need heart surgery or other interventions to survive. In Kentucky, Medicaid and KCHIP cover nearly half of children overall and more than half of children with special health care needs. These are the children whose hearts are represented by my drawings. I yearn for these children's smiling pictures as they live and grow with battle wounds of surgical scars, but I know that these heart warriors need our help. As someone who sees the importance of Medicaid and CHIP first-hand, I urge our Kentucky lawmakers to reject cuts to these vital programs. Because of these programs, my patients and so many more Kentucky children grow up healthy in our communities. Medicaid and CHIP are lifelines for children and families in our state, including the children who belong to these special hearts. We must protect these programs so patients like mine can thrive. Congress must do what's right and protect Medicaid and CHIP. Opinion Ark Encounter offers top canine training to police. Bible studies are optional. Allison K. Black, MD, FAAP is a pediatric cardiologist in Louisville. This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Medicaid cuts could leave half of KY children without care | Opinion
Yahoo
a day ago
- Yahoo
New Study Links Surge in Pediatric Firearm Deaths to Looser State Gun Laws
A major new study published June 9th in JAMA draws a stark line between firearm policy and pediatric deaths in the U.S. — and the findings are sobering and statistically significant. The research examined child and teen firearm mortality trends following the 2010 Supreme Court ruling McDonald v. Chicago, which expanded Second Amendment protections nationwide. While the ruling applied federally, individual states responded differently — some enacting looser gun laws in its wake, others maintaining or tightening restrictions. What followed, researchers say, was a divergence with life-and-death consequences. Here, Jeremy Samuel Faust, M.D., M.S., M.A., FACEP (of the Brigham & Women's Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine) explains the results: 'We found that the increase in pediatric firearm deaths since [McDonald] is large, but essentially isolated to states that expanded firearm access laws in the following years,' the authors wrote. 'In places that did not expand access (NY, CA, CT, etc.), rates have not gone up and in some places are down.' The numbers are stark. Over a 13-year period, there were approximately 7,400 more pediatric firearm deaths in so-called 'permissive' states than expected based on pre-McDonald trends — amounting to 573 additional deaths per year, all concentrated in states that rolled back gun restrictions. By contrast, in states that maintained stricter laws — such as New York, California, and Connecticut — rates of firearm death among youth either remained steady or declined slightly. The gap is most visible in the study's data visualization, below: 'The yellow and blue lines are the most permissive firearm law states,' the study noted. 'The gray line is the strict group of states. As you can see, no change in the strict places compared to pre-McDonald trends, but massive ones in the others.' Among the key findings: Homicides made up the majority of pediatric firearm deaths, but suicides also rose. The average age of victims was 14. In permissive states, Black youth experienced the highest initial rates and the steepest increases in firearm mortality. In strict states, however, Black youth did not see an uptick. States with strict gun laws — while still operating under the Second Amendment — avoided these increases entirely. While not part of this study, previous data underscores the broader context: Firearms are now the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1 to 19. But that risk isn't evenly distributed. In Massachusetts, for example, firearms rank sixth among causes of death in that age group. In Mississippi, they're number one. The bottom line: Gun laws matter — and when it comes to children, the difference in policies can be fatal. The post New Study Links Surge in Pediatric Firearm Deaths to Looser State Gun Laws appeared first on Katie Couric Media.
