If you were a health insurer and wanting to protect your bottom line you would only want young healthy people in your plan, right? Who would want old sick people?
They will cost you losts of money. You probably wouldn't want people with pre-existing conditions like heart disease, cancer, diabetes either right? What about people with depression? Probably wouldn't want them either.
And life insurance is a problem for these people too. I get requests from life insurance underwriters for my clients records when they have been treated for depression and anxiety disorders. The underwriters are finding out that they were in psychotherapy with me from the patient's health insurance reimbursement history.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry. Depression and anxiety are a part of life. We all suffer from depression and anxiety at one time or another. What better thing than to have someone to talk with about it so you don't suffer and struggle all alone. And yet if I have to worry that my health insurance records might reflect poorly on me in the future, it only adds to my depression and anxiety.
This is the reason that there seems to be a growing trend for people who can afford it, to pay the fee for psychotherapy out of pocket rather than use their insurance. They want to protect their confidentiality. One of my colleagues, who specializes in working with physicians and nurses told me that almost all of them pay him his fee out of pocket, because they don't want to use their insurance. It is interesting that those of us who work "in the system" and understand it best, want to use it least for behavioral health concerns.
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