The Effects of Mental Health Parity on Spending and Utilization for Bipolar, Major Depression, and Adjustment Disorders

FEHB Program and comparison group enrollees were similar with respect to sex, age, employee status, and the proportion of individuals with a given diagnosis (Table 1). The greatest difference between the two groups was that FEHB Program enrollees resided predominantly in the South (FEHB enrollees, 64.3%; comparison enrollees, 15.9%) and comparison cohort enrollees in the Midwest (FEHB enrollees, 6.8%, comparison enrollees, 59.5%).

In both the FEHB Program and comparison groups, the probability of having any mental health/substance use disorder use and the average total and out-of-pocket mental health/substance use disorder spending conditional on use in the subsequent year (2000) were highest for the bipolar disorder group and lowest for the adjustment disorder group (Table 2). Similarly, the probability of using each type of service in 2000 was highest for the bipolar disorder group and lowest for the adjustment disorder group.

All difference-in-difference spending and service utilization estimates before parity and in the second year postparity among FEHB Program and comparison group enrollees reflect changes across all enrollees in each diagnostic cohort, not changes conditional on service use. Total spending in the FEHB Program was statistically unchanged for enrollees in the bipolar and major depression diagnostic groups but decreased for the adjustment disorder group (Table 3). Out-of-pocket spending declined after implementation of parity for all three diagnostic categories among FEHB Program enrollees relative to the comparison group (Table 3). There was a statistically significant decrease in annual psychotherapy utilization only for enrollees in the adjustment disorder cohort (Table 4) after parity among FEHB Program enrollees relative to comparison group enrollees. There were no significant utilization changes after parity implementation for medication management visits, prescriptions, or inpatient days. Because utilization of some services, such as inpatient bed days, was quite low, the corresponding confidence intervals are wide. Our results were unchanged when we computed the less conservative Hochberg adjustment for multiplicity.

The effects on mental health/substance use disorder utilization and spending of implementing a comprehensive parity policy in the context of managed care in the FEHB Program differed across diagnoses of varying severity. While total mental health/substance use disorder spending was unchanged for enrollees with bipolar disorder and major depression after parity implementation for FEHB Program enrollees relative to comparison group enrollees, it was significantly lower on average for those diagnosed with adjustment disorder, a diagnosis considered less severe and chronic than the other two. Parity provided additional financial protection through decreased out-of-pocket costs to enrollees across all three diagnostic categories, which is consistent with previous studies of parity among all mental health/substance use disorder users in the FEHB Program and individuals subject to the Oregon state parity law (5, 6). However, the decrease in adjustment disorder out-of-pocket spending likely reflects the postparity decrease in total mental health/substance use disorder spending for this group.

Notably, there was a statistically significant decline in annual psychotherapy utilization only for individuals with adjustment disorder. While previous research has documented a secular trend in declining rates of psychotherapy (13–16), the difference-in-difference design of this study controls for secular trends. Thus, the reductions observed here represent the net effect of the FEHB Program parity policy, which included both parity in benefit design and the encouragement of benefit management.

To further illustrate our findings, Figure 1 summarizes the changes in out-of-pocket spending across the three diagnostic groups by health plan, comparing preparity and postparity implementation in the FEHB Program and adjusting for enrollee characteristics (age, sex, relation to employee, and geographical region). Out-of-pocket spending attributable to parity decreased approximately 21% for each of the diagnoses. These reductions include the out-of-pocket reductions in the FEHB Program plans relative to changes in the comparison plans. Thus, for bipolar disorder, out-of-pocket savings attributable to parity are larger than the decrease seen in the FEHB Program plans (because out-of-pocket spending increased for bipolar disorder enrollees in the comparison plans), whereas for major depression, out-of-pocket spending was reduced in both FEHB Program and the comparison plans. Thus, some of the out-of-pocket savings seen in the FEHB Program for enrollees with major depression would have occurred as a result of secular trends even without parity. FEHB Program enrollees with adjustment disorder also experienced a reduction in out-of-pocket spending (as did those in the comparison plan), but given the reductions in total spending and in psychotherapy utilization for this group, much of the reduced out-of-pocket attributable to parity reflects reduced utilization rather than increased financial protection.

In summary, we found two main statistically significant effects of the parity policy: 1) additional financial protection, particularly for those with major depression and bipolar disorder; and 2) preservation of spending and services for diagnoses that are, on average, more severe, but a reduction in spending and services for diagnoses that are expected to be less so. It is difficult to assess the financial impact of these savings for FEHB Program enrollees. The 21% out-of-pocket savings attributable to the parity policy for enrollees with bipolar disorder and major depression (the two diagnostic categories that experienced reductions in out-of-pocket spending but not in services or total spending) likely represents a meaningful cost decrease for many. FEHB Program enrollees include people with a wide range of jobs and pay grades—custodians who tend to the physical plant of federal buildings, postal workers, and administrative support staff, to name a few. However, the absolute dollar amounts ($148 and $100 on average, annually) are not very large, and the decrease in out-of-pocket expenses does not represent meaningful protection against catastrophic financial loss. There were few cases of extremely high out-of-pocket expenses in either period (to affect the average), and it seems likely that some of the protection against catastrophic expenses was due to the federal Mental Health Parity Act of 1996—which predates the FEHB Program parity policy and prohibited health insurers who covered mental health services from imposing higher annual or lifetime limits for these services than they did for general medical care. The FEHB Program parity policy still provided additional benefit parity, though, which is consistent with our findings of improved insurance protection from the policy.

Our utilization findings are consistent with the theory that health plans will respond to parity regulation by ratcheting up managed care to control spending increases that might otherwise accompany benefit expansion. Concerns about spending increases following benefit expansion under parity were consistent with the early research literature on this topic (17). The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, a randomized experiment of insurance benefit design on health care use and spending that was conducted in the 1970s and 1980s before managed care became widespread, found that among individuals enrolled in fee-for-service plans, decreases in enrollee cost sharing increased use of outpatient mental health services at twice the rate as for general medical outpatient services (18). In its parity directive for the FEHB Program, the OPM explicitly encouraged FEHB Program plans to use managed care techniques to control any spending increases that could result from the directive’s implementation. Therefore, it is not possible in this study to separate out the effects of parity from changes in care management. We speculate, however, that our findings of decreased utilization are likely the result of an increase in benefit management that occurred alongside implementation of parity. This is consistent with previous research showing that FEHB Program health plans increased their use of a variety of benefit management techniques after parity (e.g., primary care gatekeeping, treatment authorization, requirement of treatment plans, concurrent and retrospective reviews, and closed provider panels) (19). These techniques had been implemented in some health plans before parity implementation to control secular spending increases. But after parity, most FEHB Program enrollees were subject to stricter benefit management than they had been subject to previously.

This finding of increased benefit management accompanying parity is highly relevant given a key difference between the FEHB Program parity directive and the MHPAEA in how plans are permitted to use managed care. Unlike the FEHB Program directive, MHPAEA regulations implemented in 2011 expressly prohibit health plans from imposing more restrictive managed care techniques for mental health/substance use disorder benefits than for other health benefits as a method of controlling spending. It is possible that this regulatory provision could affect spending in response to parity among enrollees in these three diagnostic groups.

There are several limitations to consider in this analysis. First, we determined our diagnostic cohorts based on diagnosis information on claims in the baseline year. Given the often episodic symptomatic course of these illnesses, we cannot rule out the possibility that changes in utilization postparity were due to changes in symptom course independent of parity. Similarly, in claims data we cannot observe clinical outcomes, so we are unable to determine whether the postparity policy changes in utilization were associated with differential clinical outcomes. A second consideration is that utilization patterns and care management practices have changed since the study period. For example, between 1997 and 2008, mental health/substance use disorder hospitalization rates increased 15%, while lengths of stay grew shorter by 11% (20). Third, while we did not detect changes in utilization for higher-intensity services, such as hospitalization, as a result of parity, it is likely that our study was underpowered to detect changes for this service type. Finally, our approach excluded enrollees who were not continuously enrolled all four study years, so we cannot comment on the effect of the parity policy on spending and utilization among those individuals. However, this exclusion criterion was necessary to ensure that our study results were not biased by utilization patterns reflective of changes in the enrollee population, and it allowed the use of a study design that provided more confidence that changes we observed were due to the FEHB Program parity policy rather than secular trends.

Our study provides important new information regarding the effect of implementing a comprehensive mental health/substance use disorder parity policy on diagnoses that vary in severity and chronicity. Care management likely explains why the FEHB parity policy did not translate into higher utilization across diagnoses, and our study demonstrates that benefit management was applied more stringently for illnesses that are generally expected to be less severe and chronic. This difference across diagnoses would suggest that health plan care management techniques allocated resources with at least some consideration of the clinical context or need of enrollees. The promise of managed behavioral health care was to replace arbitrary limits and higher cost-sharing arrangements with clinically sensitive case-by-case management, including utilization review and requiring written treatment plans. However, in the absence of outcome data it is difficult to know whether postparity utilization levels were appropriate for FEHB Program enrollees. Future research must examine whether or how mental health/substance use disorder care management changes given the restrictions on management under the MHPAEA and the resulting impact on utilization and outcomes.