by Duaa Eldeib, Maya Miller, Annie Waldman and Max Blau

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

The U.S. Department of Labor found widespread noncompliance and violations of federal law in how health plans and insurers cover mental health care, findings that mirror a recent ProPublica investigation.

Health plans, and the companies that administer them, have excluded key behavioral treatments, such as therapies for substance use and autism, and offered inadequate networks of mental health providers, according to a 142-page report released Jan. 17 in conjunction with the Treasury and Health and Human Services departments.

The report, which the agencies are required to file regularly to Congress, also detailed the results of secret shopper surveys of more than 4,300 mental health providers listed in insurance directories and found an “alarming proportion” were “unresponsive or unreachable.” Such error-ridden plans, commonly known as ghost networks, make it harder for patients to get the treatment they need, ProPublica has previously found.

Since 2021, the Labor Department has addressed violations in health plans that serve more than 7 million people, according to the report. The agency has worked to remedy the problems by seeking changes to plan provisions, policies and procedures, as well as working to ensure wrongly denied claims were paid.

But the report acknowledged that while plans and insurers have made some progress, they continue to fall short. For instance, federal officials wrote that insurers were working faster to fix problems in their plans once they had been identified, but officials had not seen sufficient improvement overall.

© ProPublica