The American Medical Association House of Delegates says all health insurers and health plans should provide coverage for eating disorders.
Members of the House of Delegates, the governing body of the Chicago-based group, approved an eating disorder benefits resolution earlier this week, at the group's annual meeting.
The AMA started the meeting Sunday and ended it Wednesday.
The federal Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 already requires many group health plans that offer benefits for mental health services or addiction treatment services to provide comparable levels of benefits for the behavioral health care services and other types of services.
The federal parity act does not require an affected plan to provide coverage for a particular behavioral health condition, and some plans exclude coverage for conditions such as anorexia and bulimia, according to the AMA.
The new AMA resolution changes an existing AMA policy. The revised version of the policy states that the "AMA supports parity of coverage for mental illness, alcoholism, substance abuse and eating disorders."
The AMA "will advocate against exclusions from coverage of specific diagnoses such as eating disorders," according to another section of the resolution.
Dr. Barbara McAneny, a former AMA chairwoman, said in a statement that only about 10 percent of patients with eating disorders are getting treatment for the disorders, even though the mortality rate for eating disorders is high.
