In a recent post, I explained why your health insurance does not consider couples counseling to be “medically necessary.” It’s unfortunate, but it’s the way things are.
Yet I am frequently asked by people to skirt the rules and bill it anyway. Here are a few of the reasons why I don’t want to risk my livelihood to bill your insurer:
- It is fraudulent.
- I don’t want to feel like I’m looking over my shoulder, worrying about the insurance company finding out. (If this happens, insurance companies can demand reimbursement from me if they:
- think it was an uncovered service,
- do not approve of how session notes are written,
- find any other reason to do so.
- If I bill your insurer and that happens, I have in effect done charity work. And I didn’t even get to choose the charity I worked for, because insurance dictates that I can’t seek payment from the clients either!
- The insurance negotiated rate of reimbursement is way too low for the intense work marriage counseling demands. It is hard work.
- I am risking my license for a total stranger on the other end of the phone. I don’t like it that total strangers want favors or special treatment. I don’t like that strangers feel they have the right to tell me what is legal and what isn’t. My education cost me a lot of time and money, and I jumped through a lot of hoops to get it. So I respect the rules of the game.
- I value therapy and the sacred work we do in my office. I take people’s suffering and struggles very, very seriously. I personally have fought my way back to my own healing and wholeness — and it wasn’t cheap. I put a lot of energy and time into it, and spent a lot of money to boot. There are many things in life I don’t have because of my choices, but the sacredness of healing my own primitive relationship wounds (from childhood) is the richest gift I’ll ever have. I value that for myself, and I hope for others to partake also. At the end of my life, when I close my eyes and take that last breath, I will have pure contentment inside, because I have invested myself wholeheartedly in my healing.
For all of those reasons — and quite a few others… no, I will not bill your insurer.
A long time ago, I had a spiritual mentor who told me that every ritual must be paid for. Well, marriage counseling is a ritual — an important ritual for those courageous enough to enter the waters of its life-giving love.
If you’re ready — really ready — to enter those waters, I encourage you to get in touch.