This discussion is designed to help families understand to complexities of obtaining insurance coverage for the services we describe on this website. Surely anyone in the USA who has been paying attention to his or her surroundings must be aware of the political in-fighting and anger the whole topic is stirring up.  We will not use this space to get involved in those controversies any more than we must, if we are to address the problems we really want to address. What we want to address are the specific issues families encounter when they attempt to use health insurance to defray some of the cost of the services we write about on this website.

On this page we list the topics we will address on our full discussion page, accessible to members.

Take careful note:  This topic changes quickly as the political winds blow and court cases set new precedents. This is being written in October 2017.  Some of what is written here may change quickly without notice.  We will try to keep this updated but might get behind.

Here is a menu of topics we will discuss on the full discussion page and try to keep up to date (if the topic shows as a link, that topic is in place on the full discussion page for Member access):

• How coverage for mental health problems or "behavioral health" differs from traditional coverage for medical care exclusive of mental health issues.
  • Changes that are occurring
  • Confusion within the insurance world.
• The changing role of psychiatrists
  • How medication decisions are made
  • Medications:  what they can and can't do.  And the downside.
  • When a non-psychiatrist mental health professional is a better choice
    • PAs and NPs for medications
    • Psychologists, and various master's level clinicians.
• Verifying mental health (or behavioral, or substance abuse) coverage:  This usually requires two different calls to two different departments.
  • Medical necessity: Why we think public funding sources and managed care organizations get this wrong.
    • Services covered.
    • Authorized Lengths of Stay (LOS)
• Public funding supplements that may be useful to parents who can afford some private services:
  • Public School funding.
  • Medicaid or Medical Assistance

• Much more to come.

Full Discussion Page

Last Updated October 5, 2017