Posted by mair on January 1, 2006, at 16:02:19
I feel strange posting here since I've been so absent for so long.
As of today, I no longer have any medical insurance for therapy. My office decided to switch to a plan which has much greater management controls on mental health. My therapist is not in the "network" so my health insurer will no longer reimburse me for any portion of what I pay.
The new plan saves money for everyone who works where I do, except for me; It's hard not to feel that all of those savings are coming at my expense. When this was discussed with my colleagues, one of them just told me to switch therapists, particularly since mine had done such a poor job of "curing" me.
It's hard for me to argue with him since I get very defensive about the amount of therapy I've had. I've seen my present T for over 6 years. Because she was so worried about me last spring, I started seeing her 3x a week. So the timing of this is just so bad.
It appears that meds, while helpful, don't do great things for me (I've tried between 20 and 25 different drugs) and I seem to be impervious to short term therapies, of which I've tried many. And since I'm such a non-revelatory, private, mistrusting person, therapy is an unbelievably slow process for me. 1x a week was pretty worthless; I did better with 2 and better still with 3x. I'm pretty sure there are people here who've opened up more to their therapists over a 6 month period than I have in 6+ years. So my T is loathe to have me cut back right now.
I'm hopeful I can work something out with my office to pick up some of the cost, but that requires a level of advocacy and openness that is counterintuitive. Under the laws of my state, I can appeal to my insurer for an up-to 2 month transition period, during which they'd have to continue to cover me, but it requires a showing that my illness is debilitating and life threatening. My T is willing to say what needs to be said with no reservations, but I don't like seeing that kind of thing in writing, and frankly, 2 months seems like a drop in the bucket. Also the idea of the transition period is to allow me to get used to a new therapist (laughable, since it took me at least 5 years to get at all "used" to my T), but I have no intention of starting up with anyone else, and i don't know if that would make a difference to my insurer's legal obligation to cover me in that 2 month period.
I only found out about all of this in early December and feel that I've wasted every session in December talking about what the lack of coverage will mean. My T has pointed out to me that it would seem much more affordable if I actually fully billed people for my services; Billing is a big issue with me; I rarely feel that I'm worth what I'm supposed to be billing, so I either hugely discount my bills, or don't send them out for and age, if ever. She's also pointed out that the real challenge will be for me to decide that I'm worth the money that I'll now have to spend on therapy. She's surely right about that.
I already pay my T somewhat of a reduced fee because I see her so often, and she's offered to reduce her fee more for the 3rd session, if I stay with it. For my part, I've promised my T that I'm not going to quit precipitously, but mostly I've just pushed the whole issue to the side because I don't really want to think about it. I'm sort of sick of talking to her about it, and her dire predictions of how poorly I'm going to fare without therapy are pissing me off anyway. It's one thing to consider theoretically, but I think that once I start getting these humongous monthly bills, I just won't be able to stomach it, and I'll feel too guilty raiding money otherwise set aside to help cover my kids' college costs. Since I can't expect to progress in therapy at any greater rate than the glacial speed of the past, there just is never any light at the end of the tunnel.
I realize my predicament still puts me way ahead of most of the people here who are uninsured and can't afford therapy, so this all sounds pretty whiny to me. It's just that it is a big deal to me. My first uninsured session is tomorrow morning, and I find myself just not wanting to go.
Mair
poster:mair
thread:594010
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20051229/msgs/594010.html