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ultramar · Jul 28, 2013, 12:19 PM

I just read through the policy. It's pretty typical, except for one truly bizarre thing (at the end):

The good, or okay:

1) For most medical care (except emergencies) you need a referral from the student health clinic. However, this does *not* apply to mental health treatment --this is great, it takes out one step of the process.

2) Mental Health Treatment: Quote "Paid as any other sickness" This is very important, it's great (and probably from the law I mentioned).

As with *every* health insurance policy (that I know of), if you don't see providers within their network, you will have to pay large out of pocket fees.

In-network for them includes two hospitals (for in and outpt care) and a list of UnitedHealth providers (outpatient). You can research those two hospitals and see which you think is best. Also, if you can't continue to see your current providers, you would have to choose from the UnitedHealthCare list.

Your policy says nothing about therapy specifically, however I would think that since there's mental health care parity, it would be. Nonetheless, I would call and ask.

So as far as inpatient, you are limited to those two hospitals. However, in the case of an emergency (i.e. psych emergency) you can go to an out of network hospital and they say they will pay what they would if it were in-network. Though if I were you I would call and make sure they would pay for your entire inpt stay in that manner or only the ER and then you'd have to transfer (though I doubt it).

So it sounds like a decent and typical policy to me.

The only exception is something truly from bizarro-land and sounds actually like a kind of rejection of this on moral grounds or some such thing, because it's extremely unusual:

They do *not* cover suicide attempts or self-harm (i.e. if you ended up in the ER and/or inpatient for these reasons). Period. There is a separate provision stating that if you are harmed/become sick in some way from not taking your medications as prescribed by a doctor, this is also not covered -though to me it sounds like part of the same thing.

The only question I would have about this (if you make calls with questions) is if, if this were to happen would they not cover it at all, or if they would cover it as if it were out of network (partial coverage). But it sounds like it's not covered at all.

So, as I say, it sounds par for the course, and you do get full mental health coverage as if it were any other illness --with the exception of the sui/si stuff, which really sucks. Hopefully, this will not end up being an issue, though!