Is Insurance Always The Best Option?

In my private practice, my goal is always to provide you with the best quality of care. For that reason, I do not accept insurance. I know that may seem counterintuitive - let me explain. 

If you have health insurance you're probably tempted to use it for any counseling. But should you? There's actually some very compelling reasons why you shouldn't, but even before we even get to that, can you even use insurance the way you want? Too often the answer is no. 

When you try to use insurance for mental health challenges, the insurance company will require your counselor to make a diagnosis. Insurance, after all, is only interested in treating illness. If your counselor does not have a diagnosis of a mental illness for you, your insurance will not cover your counseling. What does that mean for you? It means if what you want to talk about is just having trouble dealing with new challenges or a particularly high degree of stress, your insurance company isn't going to cover it. (If a counselor diagnoses you with an illness when you don’t truly have one, that is insurance fraud.) 

If you do go down this path and you do have a diagnosable mental illness, any treatment or diagnosis will become part of your medical record. That means this can become a pre-existing condition that can raise your insurance rates.

When you are able to get insurance to cover your therapy, a few things happen. First of all, your records have to go through insurance. That means the information that your therapist might have - progress notes, treatment plans, etc. - can also be viewed by everyone at the insurance company. For some, this can feel uncomfortable; they’re trusting their deepest pain with their therapist with the expectation that it will remain confidential. This exposure of your mental health can be particularly problematic for some, particularly if you’re a lawyer, a politician, or if your job requires a security clearance of any kind.

These are some of the reasons why I prefer to take private pay only - that means you pay me directly out of pocket. Because there's nobody else involved with this scenario, I am able to maintain complete confidentiality unless there's a court order for me to share information. No one will ever have to know what you discuss in our private therapy sessions.

Additionally, being private pay allows me to cut out the middleman. Insurance companies create policies that can seem arbitrary. “No more than 6 sessions covered,” for example. By working directly for you, there is nobody to decide on an arbitrary policy of how many appointments are appropriate. I, the licensed professional counselor, decide that with you, my client. We figure out together how many times it's appropriate to meet and we're not bound by arbitrary restrictions. 

Private Pay also allows me to help you the way I see best. Maybe that means sessions more often than an insurance company would want. Maybe that means we check in by phone from time to time. Whatever is best for you, I’m free to do because I work directly for you. This also provides a higher quality of care.

To me, the most important thing is to provide my clients with the very best care I can. Cutting out the insurance company and working directly for you lets me do that. 

If you’d like to discuss working together, you can contact me for a free consultation.