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Evaluating State Mental Health and Addiction Parity Statutes: A Technical Report 26 8. Does a state statute require, authorize, or prevent the state insurance department or other relevant state agency to enforce the Federal Parity Law and any relevant federal law, or to issue regulations regarding the Federal Parity Law or any other relevant federal law? (10 points available; only one answer may be selected) a. State statute requires the state insurance department or other relevant state agency to enforce the Federal Parity Law (10 points) b. State statute authorizes the state insurance department or other relevant state agency to enforce the Federal Parity Law (8 points) c. State statute is silent as to whether the state insurance department or other relevant state agency may enforce the Federal Parity Law (5 points) d. State statute prevents the state insurance department or other relevant state agency to enforce the Federal Parity Law (0 points) State insurance commissioners (aka superintendent, health authority) are intrinsically and/or by statute required and/or authorized to perform general duties. However, state statutes expressly requiring or authorizing these officials to enforce the Federal Parity Law or other federal laws indicates that the state legislature places value in enforcing this law and expects the state agency to proactively enforce it. This does not mean that state agencies are not enforcing the federal laws even when the state parity law is silent. Some states either cannot or will not enforce the Federal Parity Law unless it is encoded in state law. For coding purposes, parity statutes and statutes setting forth the Insurance Commissioner's general duties and authority were used as the source documents for this question.

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