Does insurance cover rehab and mental health treatment?

Start with the basics

If you are new to this, three guides cover the ground every insurer page builds on: how coverage for treatment works in general, how to verify your own benefits, and how public coverage fits in.

• Does insurance cover rehab? How health plans generally treat substance use and mental health care, and what "covered" actually means.
• How to verify your insurance benefits The exact questions to ask your plan before committing to treatment, and how to document the answers.
• Medicaid and Medicare for substance use treatment How public coverage works for behavioral health, and where managed-care plans fit in.

One protection to know first: parity

Two federal protections shape almost every conversation about paying for treatment. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act requires most health plans that include mental health or substance use benefits to cover them no more restrictively than comparable medical or surgical care — in cost sharing, in visit limits, and in how approvals are handled. The Affordable Care Act adds that individual and small-group marketplace plans (the kind sold through healthcare.gov) must include mental health and substance use disorder services as essential health benefits. Parity does not guarantee that any specific service is covered, but it means behavioral health care cannot be treated as an afterthought — and it gives you solid ground to stand on if a plan's rules for treatment look harsher than its rules for medical care.

Guides by insurance company

Each guide covers the plan families that insurer offers, how parity applies, what determines your specific coverage, and how to verify benefits with that payer.

• Aetna Part of CVS Health, with employer, marketplace, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid managed-care plan families.
• Cigna Employer-focused coverage, with behavioral health benefits typically administered through Evernorth.
• UnitedHealthcare Broad plan families across employer, marketplace, Medicare, and Medicaid, with behavioral benefits often run by Optum.
• Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield–affiliated plans sold under the Anthem name in a number of states.
• Humana An insurer known especially for its Medicare Advantage plans.
• Blue Cross Blue Shield A national association of independent local plans — your benefits come from your local Blue plan.
• Kaiser Permanente An integrated plan and care-delivery system operating in some states, where care usually starts inside the Kaiser system.

RecoveryCost.com is not affiliated with or endorsed by any insurance company listed here. Coverage varies by plan — always verify your benefits before making treatment decisions.