Does UnitedHealthcare cover eating disorders?

UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the United States, covering people through employer, individual, and Medicare plans, and it administers behavioral health benefits, including eating disorder treatment, through Optum Behavioral Health, the health-services arm of parent company UnitedHealth Group.¹ If you have UnitedHealthcare, the questions that matter are what your plan covers and how to confirm it. This page explains how UnitedHealthcare coverage generally works for eating disorder treatment and how to verify your benefits.

Does UnitedHealthcare cover eating disorder treatment?

Generally, yes, when treatment is medically necessary, and federal parity law requires behavioral health to be covered comparably to medical care.²³ The 21st Century Cures Act of 2016 also clarified that eating disorder benefits, including residential treatment, are protected under federal parity law.⁴ Your specific plan sets the network, cost-sharing, and authorization rules.

What to know about UnitedHealthcare for eating disorder treatment

• Optum Behavioral Health. UnitedHealthcare's behavioral health benefits run through Optum, so eating disorder coverage, networks, and authorizations are typically handled there.
• Plan variety. UnitedHealthcare offers many plan types, and benefit details, including networks, vary across them.
• In or out of network. In-network usually costs less, but out-of-network is not always much more, and a program can confirm what your plan would actually pay.

Levels of care

When care is medically necessary, a UnitedHealthcare plan can cover the whole continuum, outpatient, intensive outpatient, partial hospitalization, residential, and inpatient or medical stabilization. Optum Behavioral Health, not the medical plan, reviews and authorizes the higher levels and runs the continued-stay reviews, so the admitting program works with Optum on your behalf.

Verifying your UnitedHealthcare benefits

Call the number on this page and a licensed eating disorder program will verify your UnitedHealthcare coverage and tell you what Optum is likely to authorize. For how authorization, cost-sharing, and denials work, see verifying your insurance.

Finding a program that accepts UnitedHealthcare

A program confirms your UnitedHealthcare coverage, including how Optum administers it, when it verifies your benefits. Search the directory and call to speak with a licensed eating disorder facility. EDrehab does not bill UnitedHealthcare or Optum and is not a network provider; the licensed eating disorder programs we connect you with are.