Employer health plans pay $35 billion for substance abuse treatment: Study

Employer-sponsored health plans paid $35.3 billion to cover substance use disorder treatments in 2018, according to a recent study published by JAMA Network Open, reports Healthpayer Intelligence. Approximately 1.4% of employees, or 2.3 million Americans, had a substance use disorder diagnosis during the study’s timeframe. The mean total annual per-enrollee expenditure for members with a substance use disorder was around 2.5 times the mean total for individuals without a substance use disorder.