How to use mental health benefits under commercial insurance, Medicare, Medicaid, and employer plans — including parity rules, appeals, and reducing out-of-pocket costs.
Priya, a twenty-nine-year-old graphic designer in Austin, Texas, had spent three weeks calling therapists in her insurance network. The eight names that had openings were either booked into the following spring, no longer accepting her plan, or specialized in something that did not match her needs. When she finally found a therapist whose Instagram post … Read more
Priya, a twenty-nine-year-old graphic designer in Austin, Texas, had spent three weeks calling therapists in her insurance network. The eight names that had openings were either booked into the following spring, no longer accepting her plan, or specialized in something that did not match her needs. When she finally found a therapist whose Instagram post … Read more
Bernard, a fifty-two-year-old line cook in Cleveland, walked into the ER on a Tuesday with chest pain that turned out to be a panic attack stacked on top of an ulcer. Three weeks later, an envelope arrived with a $14,800 bill for the visit, the imaging, and the overnight observation. Bernard had no insurance, two … Read more
Bernard, a fifty-two-year-old line cook in Cleveland, walked into the ER on a Tuesday with chest pain that turned out to be a panic attack stacked on top of an ulcer. Three weeks later, an envelope arrived with a $14,800 bill for the visit, the imaging, and the overnight observation. Bernard had no insurance, two … Read more
Jordan turned 26 on a Tuesday in March, and on Wednesday morning the pharmacy in Minneapolis told him his Lexapro prescription wasn’t covered anymore. He’d been on his mother’s plan since college, hadn’t paid much attention to insurance, and assumed coverage would just continue until he found a real job. Instead, his coverage had ended … Read more
Jordan turned 26 on a Tuesday in March, and on Wednesday morning the pharmacy in Minneapolis told him his Lexapro prescription wasn’t covered anymore. He’d been on his mother’s plan since college, hadn’t paid much attention to insurance, and assumed coverage would just continue until he found a real job. Instead, his coverage had ended … Read more
Marcus had been driving for Uber and DoorDash in Phoenix for almost three years when the panic attacks started. He was making decent money, around $52,000 a year, but he had no health insurance because he assumed contractors couldn’t afford it. After his third trip to the emergency room in two months, an ER social … Read more
Marcus had been driving for Uber and DoorDash in Phoenix for almost three years when the panic attacks started. He was making decent money, around $52,000 a year, but he had no health insurance because he assumed contractors couldn’t afford it. After his third trip to the emergency room in two months, an ER social … Read more
Tasha noticed the changes slowly at first. Her mother Evelyn, 78, living alone in Charlotte, had always managed her own affairs, but in the span of about eighteen months she’d missed three Medicare Advantage open enrollment windows, let her supplemental coverage lapse, accumulated $4,200 in unpaid prescription copays, and started telling Tasha that “the people … Read more
Tasha noticed the changes slowly at first. Her mother Evelyn, 78, living alone in Charlotte, had always managed her own affairs, but in the span of about eighteen months she’d missed three Medicare Advantage open enrollment windows, let her supplemental coverage lapse, accumulated $4,200 in unpaid prescription copays, and started telling Tasha that “the people … Read more