Thanks to ProPublica for an outstanding article, reprinted by NPR, explaining something that I have been trying to tell folks back in the States for a very long time: it is really difficult to get proper and necessary non-acute emergency access to mental health care in the US.
Mental health professionals, it seems, are also often treated in similar ways to teachers, paid only for their hours actually in the room with the patient, or in the classroom teaching classes, but not paid for the even more important, as I was told at my last teaching position, work of doing the administrative paperwork required by to get paid:
“Insurers pay only for time in session, not the documenting of notes or chasing down of payments.
The reimbursement rates for mental health clinicians are also lower than what insurers pay medical providers for similar services. … Despite federal rules requiring equitable access to care, there are no requirements to even out provider reimbursements.”
This is an insane system, unless you actually want people committing suicide.
We can really Do Better. Please write to your lawmakers after you read the article for details…






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