There are many types of insurance that offer coverage for addiction treatment and drug rehab. You can quickly check to see if your private health insurer covers addiction treatment. If not, there are still ways to get the treatment you need to overcome your addiction, such as the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, or Medicaid.
Does the Affordable Care Act Cover Drug Rehab?
Passed in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to give Americans more access to addiction treatment services. If the bill’s official title doesn’t sound familiar, you’ll likely recognize its informal title: Obamacare. The real power of the ACA comes in the form of massive coverage expansion, regulatory changes for existing insurance plans, and requiring insurance providers to evaluate alcohol and drug rehab needs in the same way they traditionally evaluate any other medical or surgical procedure. Obamacare gives you affordable access to a wealth of addiction treatments by forcing insurance companies to offer full or partial coverage for those treatments.
Many private insurers still don’t cover pre-existing medical conditions – alcohol and drug addiction being two common examples. Thanks to the ACA, however, insurance companies can no longer label drug or alcohol addiction as a pre-existing condition. And since it’s no longer considered pre-existing, they can no longer issue letters of denial for insurance coverage when someone needs to go to rehab for treatment.
You can buy your own ACA health insurance plan on the Health Insurance Marketplace at Healthcare.gov. It’s important to note, however, that some states actually have their own unique versions of the Marketplace. These state-run websites are totally separate from the federal Healthcare.gov site, with the main difference between the two being the amount of Medicare and Medicaid coverage each state offers.
