Many mental health patients and families seek treatment services through their health insurance providers. The nation’s largest and most common insurance carriers are; United Health Care, Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna, Blue Cross, Blue Shield and several other. It is common to find treatment centers, therapists, counselors, physicians and other specialty mental health treatment services accepting a certain percentage of outstanding charges to be paid by insurance companies. In order for this to occur the service provider must be contracted with the clients insurance company, and as such, is only allowed to charge dramatically reduced preset rates that fall in accordance with the company’s billing practices. This begs the questi8ons of, if the treatment facility and /or medical professional is forced to charge reduced rates in order to accept insurance clients, does this impact the quality of care such clients will ultimately receive?
Of course part of this agreement stipulates that the care provider must provide comparable services to the patient regardless; however, human nature is such that people will often devote less time and energy toward those clients spending less for services. This isn’t to say that certain mental health treatment providers are worse than others but it is important for the patient & family to perform substantial research on the facility and practitioners in order to locate any potential personal client feedback in the form of reviews and testimonials. Grey Maters International does NOT accept health insurance for payment because we feel it limits our reach in uncovering the truth of why a client or relationship struggles the way it does. More importantly, it limits our ability to utilize all available proven methods in order to help them. Insurance tend to only approve treatments that are mainstream and cost effective based on their professional cost/value analysis. We feel this is not right and that it clearly prioritizes money over patient needs.
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