Paying for Mental Health Care in Private Health Insurance in the Netherlands: Some Lessons for the United States

For large segments of the population in the United States—people covered by the marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act (2010) and those covered by private plans in Medicare and Medicaid—mental health care is financed through private health insurance markets. Integration of mental health care within private health insurance has never been entirely comfortable. A universal challenge is to prevent skimping on quality of care and mitigate incentives for insurers not to enroll and serve persons with mental illness (1). This Viewpoint summarizes the evolving policies applied in The Netherlands to counteract such incentives and draws possible lessons for insurer payment policies in the United States with respect to mental health care.