Why therapists should not take insurance.
Are You Getting Paid For Your Time Seeing Clients?
As an addiction professional, I shy away from taking insurance. The article below is exactly why. An insurance company should not dictate the care of the client. What we see when it comes to medical treatment and addiction and recovery treatment, is that the insurance dictates the length of stay, what type of program a client can attend, and if they’re going to cut off funding. This is why you see people enter a treatment center and get dumped off at McDonald’s when their insurance times out. Insurance should have no place in saying how long a client can access treatment, however, they do.
When it comes to medically assisted therapies like Suboxone, methadone, and vivitrol, an insurance company should not tell the patient or the doctor overseeing the patient, how much medication they are able to receive. Think of it this way: you go to a doctor and a doctor tells you what you need to get well. That doctor then prescribes an entire treatment plan and course of action that will help you get well in a certain time. In this case, medically assisted treatment such as Suboxone and methadone and vivitrol will help you almost immediately after receiving them. The doctor is aware of this and prescribes these items knowing how quickly they will help. A person then goes to pick these up at the pharmacy and is told that their insurance does not pay for all or part of the medication. It must then come out of pocket for hundreds if not thousands of dollars for specific items.
This trickles down into therapy and it trickles down into being able to get quality therapy. Most therapists that charge $150-$250 per hour of therapy only get reimbursed by insurance $30. When we look at minimum wage for a fast-food worker at $15 an hour that tells you that someone with a masters degree and 20 years of experience barely makes twice that amount of an unskilled teenage worker. You’re going to see more companies not taking insurance because the workload to fill out the paperwork is another hour on top of the hour they spent with their client that’s making them dollar an hour employees.
This is why at The Addictions Coach and Sober on Demand we do not take insurance. We want to provide you with a full-hour session without any distractions of having to worry about if your insurance will pay or will not pay or having to fill out paperwork and chase payment to get paid. This allows us to truly focus on the client and not worry about the other stressors that other therapists deal with. We also have access to methadone clinics, Suboxone doctors, and other doctors that are available on-demand to help you get the medications you need in a timely and quick fashion. Please give us a call at 1.800.706.0318 ext 1.
If you are a therapist that wants to learn how to fill your book of clients with cash pay and not deal with insurance, call us today.