The Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law in 2010, builds on the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (MHPAEA), and, as of 2014, requires individual and employer health plans to cover mental health and substance use disorders at the same level as regular medical care. The new provisions of the ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, have the potential to dramatically increase access to care.

Michael Dahr’s 2014 Huffington Post article, “How Obamacare is Changing Addiction Treatment Coverage,” discusses some of the ways in which the ACA will change the landscape of addiction treatment in the United States.