[googley]

Wont cover any mental health.
Why is my mental health less important than someone else's physical health?

[I_miss_my_kitty]

hi are you seeking mental health treatment at the university? my university insurance covers counseling services but only at the university or a hospital in the area when classes are in session.

[thinker22]

That sucks! There's a law in my state that says all insurers cannot discriminate between mental and physical health. So if you want to provide insurance in this state, you have to include mental health coverage. My university has a center for both kinds of treatment. That's where I get my meds. They also cannot limit your number of therapy visits, just the total amount it costs depending on your coverage plan.

The only drawback. If you've had any lapse in coverage and the university switches to a new provider (which they did this past year and I had to drop out last spring due to health issues, so I wasn't covered for last spring and summer, but was fall '08- spring '09) they can declare practically anything as preexisting until you've had coverage for 6 consec months. They did that on my for my first round of therapy this past winter and I owe some ***** $1,000 dollars because she refused to do a sliding scale. She didn't even want to accept payments until the university explained my situation about thinking I was covered when I wasn't and I was going because I was required to go even though I couldn't afford it. Like $20 is a lot of money even as a copay. I can't stand heartless people whose god is mammon. She didn't even help me with anything. She "deserves to be paid" her words, by a swift kick in the ***.

So that's my experience and I hope the insurance won't be dickheads in the future, although they have paid for some things, they sure take their sweet time on others. Still, I was uninsured for 6 of the past 8 years, and this is much better than nothing.

PM me if you want to move here I'm sure you can find out such things online...state insurance laws that is.

[Christina86]

Originally Posted by I_miss_my_kitty

hi are you seeking mental health treatment at the university? my university insurance covers counseling services but only at the university or a hospital in the area when classes are in session.

THIS.

I can get counselling for free paid by my student fees on campus as a student... same with seeing my psychiatrist.

[googley]

The school does have a health center but they only do very short term treatment. I would also feel awkward because I some of the students do practicums there and I will be studying in the psych department. They pretty much told me it was my tough luck! It makes me soooo mad! The insurance the school makes you get does not cover psych so you don't have that option to have it pay for your own treatment. The school set it up so they are individual policies instead of a group policy and hence they are not required to abide by the newly acting national parity legislation. I thought I would be better after that. I did not think that a school would be so low as to set up individual policies instead of group policies.

[thinker22]

That does suck. Sometimes I think insurance companies are evil, as are those who make sure they can cover as little as possible, such as employers or schools. It's people's lives we're talking about. It SHOULD NOT be about making/saving money by making people ill or dead.

Anyway, I was searching online for some resources for you (beats thinking about my own depression) and I found this one that is basically a health insurance search engine so you can find an affordable plan in addition to your poor university coverage. There should be some in your state that cover mental health issues as well physical injuries.

http://www.medhealthinsurance.com/lo...-insurance.htm

http://www.medhealthinsurance.com/healthcoverage.htm (health specifically)

It's a start and the site is not run by insurance companies or brokers, so it should be fairly impartial. I think in the long run, it will be better to find another policy rather than paying for everything out of pocket. Mental health is expensive! Especially if you have to be hospitalized, but some therapists can be as much or more expensive than that in 10-15 sessions!

Hope this helps and doesn't overwhelm.

[googley]

Thinker,
Thanks for those links. I will take a look at them.
Googley