Hello Everyone! I am Emily, I graduated SAFE in December last year and am still safe. I am in college now and I plan to write a research paper on mental health care and insurance policies in the US. When I was at SAFE, every person in my group had daily battles with their insurance providers. I had to leave a week early because the insurance company viewed me as “cured” which was traced to my non-suicidal reports. The reason I am bableing on and on about this is because I wanted to include examples of how mental health care is suffering in the US. If anyone who is a graduate of SAFE can identify with troubles with insurace companies, please comment about your expirience and leave a name I can pair with your quote in an interview format. First and last name please (or an alias if you dont feel comforable giving your real name.) If you don’t want to post your info here, you could also send my your email address so we can talk off the blog. Thank you for your time and sorry about the wordy post.
Thank you,
Emily
I was with Empire BCBS. It didn’t pay for out of network treatment, so Empire wasn’t originally going to pay for SAFE. While I was there, I was self-pay, so I didn’t have any insurance battles at the time. Then, my dad (who is an insurance lawyer) started fighting the insurance company. He brought the case to them, and they agreed to pay for the outpatient portion. Since the outpatient and inpatient portions are the same, minus housing, he brought the case to the state of NY, where the insurance is held. After a long and annoying legal battle, the state finally decided that as SAFE is a unique program and there is no available in-network substitute, Empire needed to reimburse us for everything. This happened over the course of a year, and it took a while for Empire to send us the money afterwords. Not a fun process. -Sarah Vaughn (pseudonym, sorry)
Thank you so much for your response! Your expirience is very helpful in writing my research paper! I hope everything sorts itself out (if it hasnt already) and that you are doing well.
I too was with Empire BC BS when I went to SAFE Aug 2008. I flew to Tx to pretty much get a denial letter so that I could fly home the next day and ‘fight’ the denial. I flew to Tx.. and the amazing staff was able to get Empire to cover outpatient days only.. so I was the first pt. who had only outpatient treatment.. without the inpatient prior.. they auth’ed 6 days when I first got there which was A LOT in ins. company world.. and from there they approved a total of 13 days.. and then I paid privately.. for five more days as an outpatient.
-Cassie Kirwan