Accessing mental health care can be a harrowing ordeal. Even if a patient finds a therapist in their network, their insurance company can overrule that therapist and decide the prescribed treatment isn’t medically necessary.
This kind of interference is driving mental health professionals to flee networks, which makes treatment hard to find and puts patients in harm’s way.
ProPublica sought to understand what legal protections patients have against insurers impeding their mental health care.
Most Americans — more than 164 million of them — have insurance plans through employers. These are generally regulated by federal law.
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