Is Therapy Covered by Insurance?

Using Insurance For Therapy at Growing Self

Does insurance cover therapy at Growing Self? The answer is… sometimes! We can help you use your insurance to pay for therapy at Growing Self under certain circumstances.

While we specialize in relationship improvement, personal growth, and professional development (Love, Happiness and Success), and all of the clinicians on our team are qualified therapists too. That means that we can help you with mild to moderate common mental health conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, etc., in addition to helping you tackle goals like learning to set healthy boundaries in relationships, or find emotional self-care strategies to navigate difficult times, or stop beating yourself up and develop greater self-acceptance.

Health Insurance Covers Therapy When…

Individuals who meet the criteria for a particular psychiatric diagnosis, who are seeking therapy (not coaching) from a counselor who is licensed in their state of residence, and who have an insurance plan that covers behavioral healthcare from out-of-network providers may be able to use their insurance to pay for therapy.

Couples in marriage counseling at Growing Self may use insurance to pay for couples counseling only if one member has a diagnosable psychiatric condition that is the focus of treatment, and meets the other criteria above.

Guide to Getting Therapy Covered By Insurance

Here’s how using your insurance for therapy works at Growing Self: 

1. If you are covered for out-of-network behavioral healthcare and 
2. Meet the requirements to use your insurance for therapy (you meet criteria for a diagnosis and are working with a state licensed therapist for therapy) then
3. You will pay for your sessions directly through our billing system, and 
4. We will submit electronic claims to your insurance company that contain your diagnosis and treatment codes once a month for the past month’s sessions and
5. Then, if you’ve met your deductible, you will be reimbursed for the cost of your therapy sessions by your insurance provider.

If you’d like to use your FHSA account with us, that’s great! We also accept payments from Flex Healthcare Spending Accounts (FHSA) managed through a Visa or Mastercard.

Using Medicaid For Therapy

If you have Medicaid (or MediCal) benefits: Medicaid requires the use of in-network providers for services they pay for — and at Growing Self is not in network. If you do wish to use Medicaid to pay for therapy, we are not able to provide you with services. We can provide you with services that Medicaid does not cover, including premarital counseling, dating coaching, career coaching, and life coaching. 

For anything else (individual therapy or family therapy involving your partner or other family members) you’ll need to seek treatment from a provider paneled with Medicaid. Your best bet is to contact your local Medicaid office for a list of in-network providers.

Does my insurance cover therapy?

Even if you do meet the requirements for using insurance to cover therapy, you may still be wondering how to determine whether your insurance will actually cover the cost of therapy. 

Whether or not you’re able to use your insurance to pay for counseling depends on what benefits your insurance plan offers for behavioral healthcare. Most carriers offer some mental health benefits, but where you can use your insurance and the out-of-pocket cost to you will depend on the particular plan. 

Depending on your benefits you might learn that by the time you pay your deductible, it would have cost you the same amount of money that you would have paid out of pocket with one of our affordable experts.

Therapy Without Insurance

At our practice we offer valuable, strategic therapy and life coaching designed to help you learn and grow. We use evidence-based approaches that have been shown by research to help you create positive change as quickly as possible. Research also shows that high-quality therapy works in as little as 8-10 sessions, and solution-focused life coaching can often work even more effectively. 

Particularly if you work with one of our extremely affordable early career therapists or coaches, you might pay less for a full course of therapy or coaching with us than you would pay for your deductible if you attempted to use your insurance to pay for “medically necessary psychiatric treatment” if that’s not really what you want or need. 

Depending on your goals for this, it may be a better investment to focus on what you want to create. We all invest in many important aspects of life: Our education, our home, our health and wellness. Health insurance doesn’t pay for pilates, fresh vegetables, or financial counseling either, but that doesn’t mean those things aren’t worthwhile. 

Investing in your personal growth, in your emotional health, and in the health of your relationships, or in the success of your career can have benefits far more valuable than what can be measured in dollars and cents.

For more information about how much therapy costs without insurance, please visit our rates and insurance page for specifics.