Fees and Insurance
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My current fees are as follows: - Individuals: $110 per hour - Couples: $150.00 per 90-minute session, $25 per quarter hour more Payment is due at each session. I do not do billing or run a tab. Cash, checks, and credit cards are accepted.
Sliding Scale For those who earn under $45,000/year for an individual or $70,000/year as a single provider for two or more people I will lower my fee to $90 per hour. I do not offer a sliding scale for couples therapy.
Insurance I currently accept the following insurance: - Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield - United (limited – will accept only if I have room in my practice) - UniCare - many EAP's
Sorry, I do not accept HMO's at this time. The main reason for this is because of the undue paperwork required every six sessions to re-apply for authorization. In this process I am required to reveal much more personal information about the client than usual, and the insuranc company then acts as if they are the professional therapist, and they make decisions about whether you "need" the sessions or not. If you want to use your insurance for your therapy sessions, you may want to consider converting your policy to a PPO the next time it comes up for renewal.
It is your responsibility to contact your insurance provider and get answers to the following questions:
Accepting insurance is a service I provide to stay in concert with making psychotherapy available to everyone. However, there are trade-offs to using your insurance to pay, as there are challenges in working with their sometimes overly bureaucratic and rigid systems.
The down side of using insurance to pay for your therapy is that every claim I submit for a session must include a diagnosis, putting your mental health squarely into the medical model of “disease” and “treatment.” This “disease” is one that will be included in a paper trail that will follow you for several years. It is a well-known fact that many insurance companies have chosen to deny a person coverage due to even the most benign mental health diagnoses. While the insurance industry is in transition, there is at the time of this writing no guarantee that the diagnosis given to you by submitting a claim will not prevent you from gaining access to affordable health coverage at a later date.
So, you may want to weigh the short term savings of using your insurance with the long term loss of paying, in some cases, more than double your monthly premium for health insurance for years to come. This may not seem like an issue if you are young and covered with a large group by your employer, but as we age, the cost of premiums goes up, and the difference in price between individual coverage (which we currently must qualify for by being in very good health) and group coverage (with your employer, for instance) gets ever wider. Responsibility for Payment Ultimately Remains with You An average of about 10% of the claims I submit for payment are denied for one reason or another. Often the error is made by the insurance company, but ferreting out the reason for denial is overly long and frustrating. In general it will be your responsibility, if you choose to use your insurance, to be the one to follow up with your insurer to correct issues of non-payment. In any case you are ultimately responsible to pay for your therapy sessions if your insurance company does not pay. If it is decided that your coverage was not in effect, you will then be responsible for Beth's full fee and not the insurance discounted rate.. |
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Beth Strong, MA, LPC |