How much will coverage for universal access to comprehensive behavioral healthcare really cost?

The following article summarizes and reviews four recent research reports attempting to quantify how much a universally available, nondiscriminatory behavioral healthcare benefit would actually cost--per person per year. The author suggests that the cost differences between these reports primarily reflect different assumptions related to the expected behavioral healthcare delivery system and designs for behavioral healthcare benefits. Comprehensive behavioral healthcare delivered through well-managed benefit plans is likely to cost a little more than $200 per person per year, which would be much more affordable for our country than unmanaged comprehensive behavioral healthcare, which easily could cost in excess of $300 per person per year.