259
“I Don’t Want to Die”: Needing Mental Health Care, He Got Trapped in His Insurer’s Ghost Network
(www.propublica.org)
this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2024
259 points (99.6% liked)
News
22903 readers
3367 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This happened to us when we wanted to get my son help for some behavioral issues. Trying to find a counselor who specialized in helping children was a nightmare.
Our health insurer's website listed a few dozen, which was encouraging at first. But when I started calling them most were no longer in business, no longer accepted our health insurance (despite still being listed on the insurer's website), or didn't accept any new patients. And of the few who did have some availability, their evangelical Christianity beliefs were a fundamental part of their work - to the point where Jesus preaching was going to be a constant focus of the therapy.
We finally found someone (she was a devout Christian but it didn't interfere with her counseling strategies, so that's fine). But even she stopped accepting new patients soon after we signed up because she was so slammed with demand.
The state of mental healthcare in America is fucking atrocious. There are too few therapists in general, especially ones who help children. And as this article points out, health insurers deliberately make it so difficult for those counselors to use them that they refuse to work with with many insurance plans. And so many therapists are outside the pricing of families, even when they have insurance, and even with those therapists giving discounts.
A big part of this is the legacy that mental healthcare still isn't seen as a legitimate practice by many in the corporate world, despite their false marketing claims. Considering how frequently big insurers screw people out of claims for physical illnesses (cancer, etc.), you just know they will screw people with mental health challenges at least as much. Because to some of them - especially older boomers who are still lingering in senior management rules - it's all fud.
Another part of the problem (which relates to my previous point) is that mental healthcare isn't as quantifiable as most physical healthcare (because the brain and feelings are very complicated), so corners are cut and the industry is seen with suspicion and frustration by insurers who are focused on making as much money from their customers as possible.
The net result? A ton of people who are struggling through daily life with their own challenges, and exhausted family members and friends who are having to try to help them as best they can.
Until we massively overhaul the broken healthcare/insurance system here, shit like these ghost networks and the underlying causes and their other effects will continue to break our society.
My two pennys are betting that this is all part of some larger purposeful plot to destroy the US from within, starting with the 1981 Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act by the Reagan administration which cut federal funding for mental health services and shifted responsibility to individual states who did not have the resources or systems in place to adequately care for those with mental illness.
Or, maybe I’m just paranoid and in need of some help.
It started with Kaiser lobbying Nixon* out of m4a, Reagan just kind of loosened the brake line and put a few bricks on the accelerater.
*I love autocorrect
It's a feature, not a bug. Meaning it's designed for profit, not for care.
What the fuck? Those aren't counselors, those are fucking quacks who should be in prison for fraud!
Providers are suffering, too. Were need single payer comprehensive, and giving the average taxpayer some of the benefits of their tax dollars is easily achievable. We just keep moving economically right.
We got super lucky that a new therapy office that took our insurance opened up here a couple of months after my daughter's former therapist had to give up her job for health reasons. She really needs therapy to help her stay centered and she was losing it. We were looking into driving her to other towns if necessary. You're right, it's a nightmare.