The long battle over mental health parity is heating up again, with the Biden Administration pushing for new regulations that would force insurers to prove that they are providing mental health care coverage comparable to other health coverage, and insurers protesting that such requirements will raise new costs and difficulties with compliance.

This is an old war: the first mental health parity law was passed in 1996, requiring that mental health coverage be roughly the same as medical health coverage. But carve-outs, exceptions, and cost-sharing policies gave insurers loopholes that reduced the effectiveness of the legislation—and new versions passed in 2008 and 2010 tried with limited success to close those loopholes and make mental parity a reality, rather than just a talking point.

At a time when mental health services have never been in higher demand, the Biden Administration took another run at improving coverage in July, using the Departments of Labor; Health and Human Services; and Treasury to call for a series of new rules to make mental health care more accessible and affordable to consumers. The new measures would strengthen requirements on mental health coverage parity, require insurers to show they are in compliance, and expand the reach of the law to government health plans.