Issue link: https://blog.providence.org/i/1035653
Evaluating State Mental Health and Addiction Parity Statutes: A Technical Report 11 Limitations The scope of the quantitative analysis included state statutes only. Applying a quantitative instrument to statutes that are qualitative in nature leaves room for interpretation as the SCI was applied. Our consensus method was used to mitigate discrepancies in applying the instrument. This process also revealed that some statutes are written in ways that do not clearly align with the SCI items. For example, some states scored high for their requirements around coverage of mental health conditions, but low for coverage of substance use disorders. The SCI did not distinguish state statutes to this level of granularity. In addition, the analysis only evaluated Medicaid if the state parity statute included it explicitly. Since 65 million Americans were enrolled in Medicaid managed care, 13 which is required to comply with the Federal Parity Law, development of a Medicaid coding instrument is needed. As the items included in the SCI may not capture every domain of state statutes that are important to achieving parity outcomes, monitoring state laws on a regular basis can identify trends for inclusion into future iterations of the SCI. Legislative updates are regularly posted to ParityTrack.org. Appendix C includes a narrative summary of trends in recent proposed legislation. Table 2. List of States and State Parity Statutory Score on the Statutory Coding Instrument State (score) State (score) State (score) State (score) State (score) Alabama (74) Hawaii (67) Massachusetts (61) New Mexico (47) South Dakota (55) Alaska (43) Idaho (36) Michigan (54) New York (53) Tennessee (79) Arizona (26) Illinois (100) Minnesota (51) North Carolina (49) Texas (68) Arkansas (59) Indiana (38) Mississippi (57) North Dakota (48) Utah (58) California (51) Iowa (50) Missouri (63) Ohio (51) Vermont (53) Colorado (70) Kansas (65) Montana (66) Oklahoma (55) Virginia (71) Connecticut (60) Kentucky (66) Nebraska (43) Oregon (47) Washington (51) Delaware (57) Louisiana (51) Nevada (54) Pennsylvania (55) West Virginia (55) Florida (53) Maine (76) New Hampshire (71) Rhode Island (67) Wisconsin (52) Georgia (60) Maryland (68) New Jersey (54) South Carolina (50) Wyoming (10) ________________ 13 Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2016). Total Medicaid Managed Care Enrollment [Data file]. Retrieved from https://www.kff. org/medicaid/state-indicator/total-medicaid-mc-enrollment/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Locatio n%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D