On May 15, 2025, the U.S. Departments of Labor, Treasury and Health and Human Services (collectively, the Departments) announced a temporary non-enforcement policy related to the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA) regulations issued in 2024 (the 2024 Regulations). We previously discussed the impact of the 2024 Regulations on health plan sponsors in this alert. The non-enforcement policy is in response to: (1) the ongoing litigation in ERIC v. HHS, challenging aspects of the 2024 Regulations; and (2) the Trump Administration directive to review all regulations for undue burden on small business or significant costs upon private parties that are not outweighed by public benefits.
The upside of this announcement for health plan sponsors is the non-enforcement policy applies to failures occurring prior to a decision in the ERIC litigation, plus an additional 18 months. In other words, plan sponsors will not be found non-compliant with MHPAEA under affected aspects of the 2024 Regulations until late 2026, at the earliest. The downside is the non-enforcement policy only applies to those provisions in the 2024 Regulations that are new in relation to pre-2024 Regulations guidance. This would include the additional data elements required for the comparative analysis, the fiduciary certification and the forthcoming data analysis and meaningful benefits requirements. Importantly, the Departments reiterate that the comparative analysis requirement, as implemented by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, remains effective.
So, what does this mean for plan sponsors who have either completed their comparative analyses or are working on coming into compliance with the 2024 Regulations? In short, not much. The MHPAEA generally remains enforceable, as are the requirements to maintain a non-quantitative treatment limit (NQTL) comparative analysis and the quantitative treatment limitation analysis. As noted above, the NQTL comparative analysis no longer needs to include the specific data elements required by the 2024 Regulations. In addition, the portions of the 2024 Regulations effective with the 2026 plan years will not be enforced until the non-enforcement policy expires (or, perhaps more likely, they will be pulled from future regulations).
In support of this position, we are aware of an ongoing Health and Human Services MHPAEA audit in which the auditor, after release of the non-enforcement policy, confirmed that the audit would continue and the plan sponsor was obligated to disclose the requested NQTL analyses.
Ultimately, plan sponsors should continue working to complete their comparative analysis or, if not started, begin preparing. While a MHPAEA-specific audit may be unlikely in this non-enforcement environment, a plan sponsor may still need to disclose the comparative analysis as part of a general compliance audit and must disclose it in response to a participant request.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.
