Losing a Therapist
I’m not even sure if we’ve lost her or not, it just feels like it right now. Apparently my husband’s insurance only covers 20 mental health visits per year, and I met those in July and had two more appointments after that, so I now owe the therapists office $250.
So, joy…at $125 a visit there’s no way I can afford to have one visit a week as my therapist wants. I’m hoping that she’ll be able to cut a deal but I’m also fearful that she won’t be able to do that because the economy is hurting everyone, and she won’t be able to afford that, then again me giving her something is better than losing me entirely, aside from the fact that I’m hopeful she really does want to help me aside from the financial aspect, but it’s hard to trust that things will work out.
I’ve been screwed over so many times by so many people, and we were just starting to all be able to trust her and talk to her, and now this. I know it’s not my therapists fault. I know she didn’t do this. It’s the insurance company…and I feel partially responsible for not thinking to check that there was a limitation on visits…but…argh. It’s just a horrible situation, and I know I’m not the first who has been through this, but it seems so stupid that there’s such little emphasis placed on taking care of mental health situations. One appointment a month is nowhere near enough to fix the issues that I have, and now I’ll have none until January unless something can be sorted out.
August 28th, 2008 at 11:31 am
i’m sorry to read about your challenges with health insurance and mental health. even with mental health parity, it can be a major pain (my state has mental health parity, but since the additional visits are limited to particular diagnoses, my insurance company has a policy of just denying claims, in the hopes that people who are using more than the standard number of visits will be intimidated into not using more visits… so it’s this annoying three or four week process to get them to approve the claims *again*, even though they should pay!)
i hope that you can work something out. and i know it’s not a great solution, but if you and your therapist really *can’t* manage to find a way to meet more often, could she possibly make a recommendation of some way of getting mental health care from someone else who has more of a sliding scale (i know some areas have clinics with very low cost mental health care–like $10/session).