we've also talked about low fee mental health care options in the psychotherapy forum. many therapists will give a sliding scale on their fee and some even take pro bono cases. my t gives me $50 off her usual rate since i can't work currently. also, the colleges of many psychology graduate programs have clinics where they offer therapy quite inexpensively. the therapy is usually done by psych interns completing their graduate hours. i've done that also and one was good and graduated and referred me to another intern who was not so good. another thing is psychoanalytic training institutes also offer free/low cost psychoanalysis with their students who i believe have more training than those at the regular psych graduate schools. if i'd known about that i would have probably done that but my t is psychoanalytically trained as well. you can negotiate with hospitals on their fees. i know a guy who had surgery at the county hospital and the bill was $60,000 and he got it reduced to zero--no joke!

i've had an HMO (pacificare) in the past and i don't think i would even consider trying to find a t thru that. the medical doctors were pretty poor quality. now i'm back to PPO insurance where it's more expensive but i can choose from many, many doctors. unfortunately, the HMO was so ridiculously limited in their choice of doctors and they were not physicians i would ever recommend to anyone so i can't imagine the ts would have been any better.