One of the goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to improve women’s access to health care. In the past, women could be denied insurance coverage because they were women or could be charged more for insurance than their male counterparts.
Recent changes expanded the scope of mental health parity in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which requires insurance companies to cover specified diagnoses on a “nondiscriminatory basis”. This means that copayments, deductibles, coinsurance, unit of service limits- such as hospital days and outpatient visits, and/or annual or lifetime maximums are no greater for mental disorders when compared to physical conditions.
