Overview
Every state has a substantial number of laws that require private market health insurance to cover specific benefits and provider services. An introduction to such laws is provided below, titled Understanding Mandated Health Insurance Benefits.
State Mandated Benefits
Traditionally states counted health mandate laws to include required categories of up to 70 distinct “benefits” as well as “health providers” (such as acupuncturists or chiropractors) and “persons covered” (such as adopted children, handicapped dependents or adult dependents). Adding up these laws, there are more than 1,900 such statutes among all 50 states; another analysis tallies more than 2,200 individual statute provisions, adopted over a 30+ year period.
