Blumenthal Presses Parity Enforcement as Federal Rules Go Undefended

Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Connecticut behavioral health advocates used a press conference on the New Haven Green on Friday to press the federal government to enforce mental health parity law, the same day the senator sent a letter to three cabinet secretaries objecting to what he described as the administration's refusal to defend its own 2024 rules in court.

Blumenthal's letter, addressed to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, expresses "deep disappointment" in the government's "refusal to defend" the 2024 final rules under the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, which he wrote has effectively allowed the rules to be struck down. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, enacted in 2008, requires insurers and health plans to cover mental health and substance use disorder benefits on terms no more restrictive than those applied to medical and surgical care.

What Washington stopped defending

The rules at issue were issued in September 2024 and were immediately challenged in court by an insurance industry coalition, the ERISA Industry Committee, which filed suit in January 2025. In May 2025 the three departments announced they would not enforce the 2024 final rule while the litigation proceeded, and in a March 2026 court filing they told the court they would no longer defend the regulation, saying they intended to reconsider it.

The practical effect, according to the advocates who spoke Friday, is that the most detailed federal guidance on how plans must analyze their own coverage restrictions has been shelved without a replacement. Earlier this year the Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration issued Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2026-03, dated September 8, 2026, announcing that the agency will focus enforcement on non-quantitative treatment limitation requirements while declining to pursue enforcement of the portions of the 2024 rules that are new relative to the 2013 regulation.

The argument Blumenthal brought to the Green

In his own remarks, Blumenthal framed parity as a promise that has never been kept in practice. "Mental health and physical health should be insured the same way [and] entitled to equal benefits and the same kind of priority," he said, adding that "only through uniform nationwide enforcement can we eliminate discriminatory barriers and guarantee equitable access to care for all families." WTNH reported that the senator's letter cites more than 500,000 adults in Connecticut living with a mental health condition and that he argues many face higher premiums or denials of coverage.

Christian Damiana, coordinator of the Connecticut Parity Coalition, made the case in clinical terms. A patient who sees a cardiologist for chest pain, he said, is not asked to prove the pain is real, is not required to seek permission for a follow-up appointment and is not told after six visits that they have improved enough to lose coverage. "That's exactly what happens with mental health treatment every single day in America," Damiana said. "Your mind and your heart should be covered on equal terms."

Why a state with its own parity laws still needs federal rules

Connecticut is not a passive observer in this fight. Under Gov. Ned Lamont the state has enacted what Damiana described as two of the strongest parity laws in the country, and in April it fined five of the state's major health insurers a combined $3.2 million for violating them. The obstacle is structural: Connecticut's statute points to federal law as the enforcement mechanism, so when the federal rules are withdrawn, the state's leverage narrows with them.

"When Washington guts those federal rules, our state's ability to do that enforcement is gutted as well," Damiana said.

That interdependence explains why a press conference in New Haven is a federal story. The parity framework is the main instrument available for compelling private insurance coverage of substance use disorder treatment, and the access problems it is meant to address — prior authorization for continuing therapy, medical necessity reviews that expire after a set number of sessions — are the same barriers that keep people out of medication-assisted treatment and standard outpatient care long before they reach a clinic.

Representatives of the Treasury, Labor and health departments did not respond to requests for comment before the New Haven Independent published its account. The administration has said in a court filing in the ongoing case that it intends to reconsider the 2024 rule.

The next move is in Hartford

Because the federal floor is in flux, advocates are preparing to write it into state law. Damiana said the coalition will ask Connecticut legislators in January to follow Washington State, Colorado, Maryland and California in codifying the 2024 federal protections, so that the standards survive regardless of who occupies the White House.

For a state that hosts much of the insurance industry, he argued, the stakes are also reputational. "Somewhere in Connecticut, someone is trying to find a therapy appointment right now," Damiana said. "In the insurance capital of the world, it ought to be the easiest place in America to make that call."

Whether the campaign turns into legislation will depend on a legislature that has already moved twice on parity, and on how much of the 2024 rule the federal departments eventually restore. Until then, the enforcement gap described on the Green on Friday remains the operative policy: a 2008 law that guarantees parity in principle, a 2024 regulation designed to make it testable, and a federal government that has stopped defending the test.