Sarah Bassler Millar Discusses EBSA's Mental Health Parity Guidance With Law360

Benefits and executive compensation partner Sarah Bassler Millar spoke with Law360 about new mental health parity guidance issued by the US Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration.

According to the article, the guidance outlines potential compliance issues identified by the subagency and provides recommendations for how plans should monitor third-party administrators' compliance with mental health parity requirements, including through written monitoring policies.

Millar noted that the recommendations warrant careful consideration, including whether additional guidance may be helpful and whether certain practices should be approached with caution by plan sponsors.

“We also want to be careful that we don't put a policy in place that we're inadvertently not going to follow,” Millar said. “We might have the best intention of having an annual meeting with our vendor to talk specifically about mental health parity. But one thing happens, and all of a sudden, it's 18 months instead of once a year — and then all of a sudden, there is an apparent breach of fiduciary duties because we're not following our own written policy.”