The Partnership for Employer-Sponsored Coverage issued a statement to the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee for their hearing entitled “Examining Our COVID-19 Response: Using Lessons Learned to Address Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders," which emphasizes the Coalition’s support for expanding employees’ access to behavioral and mental health services through telehealth.

In the hearing statement, the Coalition noted that now is a good time for Congress to assess the behavioral and mental health needs of Americans and employees’ access to services, as the pandemic has put additional strains on millions of workers. P4ESC’s statement further noted that “[t]he pandemic has offered employees the ability to receive behavioral and mental health care services via telemedicine, and we strongly support making this access permanent.”

P4ESC further expressed its support for enabling employers to offer a stand-alone telehealth service plan to all employees, regardless of enrollment in sponsored medical coverage, and noted that telehealth is a way to address concerns about lack of behavioral and mental health providers in many areas of the country.

The full statement is available HERE and an excerpt about access to providers is below.

Employers and employees face challenges in finding available and affordable behavioral and mental health care providers. Some behavioral and mental health providers – particularly those in rural areas – decline to participate in health insurance networks. In the case of most self-insured plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), employers rent insurance carriers’ provider networks. The decision to join a network lies with the provider, subject to network standards.