The Effects of Mental Health Parity Legislation on Mental Health Related Hospitalizations

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of state level parity legislation on mentalhealth care utilization. Using HCUP NIS data we find that for privately insured patientsparity increased the average length of hospital stays by about 3/5 and 3/4 of a day forpatients with bipolar disorders and schizophrenia respectively while parity had no effecton the length of stay for patients with major depressive disorders. At the same time paritydecreased charges of hospitalization by about 8.5% for bipolar disorders and by 22% formajor depressive disorders. We did not find any effects on hospitalization charges forschizophrenia. Our results could be downward biased due to the potentialmiscategorization of patients who are not subject to parity. (H75, I18)