My View of Insurance
The insurance issue is a VERY important one and I want to let you know my thoughts and advice to you about it in detail as I think both will help you:Many of us have health insurance and we want it to pay for our healthcare costs including our need for therapy. In the US, the practice has been for employers to provide employees with health insurance or to pay for a portion of it and the employee pays another portion that is taken out of their paycheck every pay period. We have come to expect that our health insurance will cover the cost of our healthcare BUT that is not the case! In addition to the amount we are asked to pay out of pocket to the provider at the time the service is provided (our “co-pay” amount) our health insurance DOES NOT pay for the full cost of the services provided.Insurance companies will use any means necessary to avoid paying the amount listed on the provider’s “superbill”. They will deny all or part of a payment and the provider then has to spend a great deal of time on the phone begging for the company to pay the full amount. All of that time on the phone is LOST TIME…it cannot be billed for and I cannot use that time to see another patient and help them or to do anything for YOU or your needs. Insurance companies deny payment and they hope the provider will just accept whatever the insurer pays them for the services provided you and will not challenge the insurer’s lack of complete payment. So, they make it as hard as possible for providers like me to actually get through on the phone and then will pass me from person to person while I sit on hold on the phone for 15 minutes waiting for the next person who won’t do anything to help. Four or five 15 minute wait periods later and I have wasted over an hour. The insurer hopes I will give up and hang up and it can get away with paying less than billed.Every insurance company makes its money (and they make a LOT of money) by (1) charging a premium for coverage and (2) keeping their "pay out" (reimbursement) for your as low as possible by any means necessary. The difference between what the insurer was paid for your insurance and what they pay out for you is their profit—it goes into their pocket and they want to make that “spread” between what you/your employer paid IN and what the insurer paid OUT as large as possible so they can maximize their profit.THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY IS, IN MY VIEW, AN EVIL INDUSTRY THAT DOES NOT CARE A BIT ABOUT YOU OR YOUR HEALTH OR YOUR PROVIDERS TRYING TO HELP YOU.Your insurer will dump you off their panel in a microsecond if it thinks you are going to cause them to lose money. Their focus is on profit, not patient care, not collaboration with me, and certainly not concern about you. Do not be misled by their warm and fuzzy TV ads saying how much they care about you. They care about your money, period. Like many psychologists, I do not take insurance because I cannot ethically support the kind of abuse I see perpetrated on you and providers like me by the insurance industry. If I take your insurance, your insurer will:
Pay me MUCH less than what I bill causing me to struggle much more to maintain the financial viability of the practice that is here to serve you. I can’t let the practice fail because of insurance non-payments as that would then make it impossible for me to help you or anyone else—the entire reason I opened the practice in the first place.Require me to fight with them to get another session or two for you or fight over non-payment and waste an hour or more of my unpaid time and effort doing so.Deny your need for more sessions after you reach the limit your insurer imposes on you. And who makes the denial? An administrative “customer non-service worker” who has no training in Psychology, has no license to practice it, does not know you nor care about you and wants to get me off the phone talking about you as soon as possible. Do you want someone like that telling you and me how many sessions you can have? Should that unlicensed administrator be empowered to make that decision for you?Exert their contractual right (I have to sign a contract to get on their “panel”) to see your confidential therapy session notes. Do you really want your privacy violated like that?Expose you to an even greater risk of being “dumped” because of any psychiatric/psychological diagnosis they require me to submit to justify my service with you. Do you want your diagnosis to be attached permanently to you like a red flag that will cause other insurers to not want to insure you and will be a matter of public record that a future employer could learn about? Do you want your hurt and your work to heal your life in your work with me to be used against you like that? Haven’t you hurt enough?
For all the above reasons and in order to protect your privacy and prevent you from having any personal information you share with me from becoming known to your insurer and anyone your insurer chooses to share it with, I cannot ethically participate in the “health insurance” game that is being played now in the U.S.—a game causes both providers like me and clients like you to lose every time and disrespects us both.Knowing all this, if you would still like to use your health insurance to pay for part of your work with me, I will (at your specific request) sign and note down the diagnosis code on your insurance form you present to me. You may then send that to your insurer and they may or may not reimburse you for some portion of the cost of our work together. What they pay you will, likely, be less than what you paid me and I encourage you to see the difference as your smart investment in your psychological and emotional health. My commitment to you is:
That you participate in therapy as long as YOU feel it is helpful—you make the decision…not your insurer and not me.YOU make the call on how much time and financial investment you make.We will not waste time or your financial investment in therapy and will work as efficiently as possible while still allowing plenty of space and time for you to express all you need to express and discuss everything that matters to you.Your personal information will remain confidential—no scarlet letter “A” branded on you—no “red flags” for others to see!!!
Get the help you need PRIVATELY while you protect yourself against the damage that your insurer can do to you by letting your work in therapy be known or “leaked” out if someone "hacks" into the insurance company electronic records. While therapy may seem expensive, it is an investment in your life, your psychological well being, your dreams, and your forward movement in your life. It is the best money you will ever spend because, as you improve your life and your ability to manage it better, you will save so much more time and effort and money in the future by avoiding getting tangled up in new/unnecessary problems. That time/effort/money has a value and you will find that your investment in working with me now will save you much more money in the future than you ever invested with me. It will pay you back MANY times over! And as I promised in my audio recording on the Home page of this website, if you finish therapy with me and you can truly and honestly say that you got absolutely nothing out of it, I will refund you all the money you paid for that therapy. I am so confident in my ability to help
you that I can comfortably make
that guarantee and
I will keep that promise!