Talk Therapy and Insurance Issue

Therapist financial abuse?

I’m posting on behalf of my wife regarding a situation that I find very distressing, but as she really likes this therapist it makes the situation quite hard for her.

For background, my wife has been going to this therapist who runs her own private practice out of her house for about 2 years now. My wife pays at the time of service the full amount ($150), to which the therapist is supposed to give her a superbill for my wife to send to her insurance company in order to get reimbursed.

This was working well for the first year or so, but then my wife stopped receiving these superbills. She didn’t want to bother her therapist so she let it go on for a bit thinking the therapist would realize, but that didn’t happen, so eventually she brought it up to her. After a while (too long IMO), it got fixed and she was reimbursed about a grand.

After that, this cycle continued and my wife, who didn’t want to feel like she’s pestering and angering her therapist that does great things for her, didn’t bring it up for a while. This meant she continued to pay $150 1x/wk with no reimbursement. At this point, she is owed 5 grand. Her therapist is acutely aware of her financial struggles as that is a big portion of their sessions. It has gotten to the point where she is unable to go to therapy anymore because she simply can’t afford it. She now has texted her therapist twice in the past week asking for the situation to be resolved, and her therapist is not responding to her.

What do we do in this situation? Not only is it illegal for her therapist to not allow her to access her medical records upon request, but adding the layer of the power dynamic of a therapist who knows her financial stressors just makes this so much worse. Right now our next step is to contact her insurance company directly but we have done this before and her therapist still has not sent the superbill over in a timely manner. Any advice welcome, thank you!

submitted by /u/Fast_Entertainer_340
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