Joanne Roskey commented on a proposal being reviewed by the White House updating mental health parity requirements that employers that sponsor health plans have been calling for. The proposal is meant to clarify plans' and issuers' obligations under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA). The law requires most health plans or health insurers that offer mental health substance use disorder coverage to make the benefits available in parity with medical and surgical benefits. "We're expecting more explication of how to pick comparable mental health and med-surg services for purposes of doing the analysis," Roskey said. "Information on the type of data and the level of detail that's expected using examples" would be helpful, she noted. The Department of Labor's (DOL) Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has increasingly focused on whether covered provider networks for mental health services are adequate and comparable to networks of medical providers, as well as whether reimbursement rates for mental health providers are comparable to those for medical providers, Roskey acknowledged. "It would be helpful to have more information on what a comparative analysis in this area looks like, and how market dynamics might factor into that analysis," she said.