David Shillcutt, Member of the Firm in the Health Care & Life Sciences practice, in the firm’s Washington, DC, office, was quoted in Law360, in “Decline in EBSA Funding May Hurt Mental Health Parity Efforts,” by Kellie Mejdrich. (Read the full version – subscription required.)
Following is an excerpt:
The U.S. Department of Labor's employee benefits arm warned Congress in its latest budget request that it may have to scale back its efforts to implement federal mental health parity laws and the No Surprises Act by 2025.
According to a congressional budget justification for the DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration, transmitted to Congress on March 11 with the rest of President Joe Biden's administration's fiscal year 2025 request, more resources are needed because funding for more than 100 full-time employees devoted to those efforts expires at the end of 2024. …
David Shillcutt, a behavioral healthcare attorney and member of the firm at Epstein Becker Green, pointed out the significant size of the $500 million requested in the latest budget proposal for implementation of the NSA and parity across the three agencies, in comparison to EBSA's overall annual budget.
"This $500 million appropriation, in being so disproportionate to their annual appropriations, reflects the really significant enlargement of the DOL's regulation of healthcare," Shillcutt said.
"So we see them flipping from regulating benefits generally, including but not limited to health, to this really unprecedented expansion into regulation of healthcare pursuant to these new requirements" of the No Surprises Act and the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, he said. …
