Our mental healthcare system is broken. Our addiction treatment system is broken.

We are still reeling from the opioid crisis, which we never quite got our arms around. And I am just thinking that we are adding fuel to the fire here and that we should be very mindful of the fact that this is going to get, as we are…

I believe that because of the wide number of plans and the fact that these plans have not yet come close to earning our trust or their patients' trust, we not only need to have random, robust, and immediate audits, but also public…

I can't help but think a huge uptick in the prescribing of benzodiazepines, coupled with huge increases in alcohol consumption, and then, of course, coupled with the new commercialization of marijuana, that we don't have a kind of major…

We need substantive systemic reform. We need legal mental health parity, like what my cousin Patrick has envisioned.

Isolation is not good for your mental health. It is a coping mechanism for people who do have addiction and mental illness.

And so, Doctor, if a health plan is not compliant in providing parity coverage for mental and behavioral health services, do you think that should be public knowledge?

To think that we are losing just as much, if not more, to these illnesses and we are not hearing about it at all.

benzodiazepine scripts have gone up over 30 percent since COVID hit--30 percent.

addiction is addiction is addiction. It could be opioids today, but it could be benzodiazepines tomorrow.

So one of the things that the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Treatment Act, along with subsequent parity laws, did was to ensure that plans provide information on how they are making mental and behavioral health parity decisions.