URGENT!!! Missing Connecticut Woman!!!
This is a story about a Mental Health Care Nightmare that has been going on over the last year. This story involves a family that has been struggling and battling mental illness issues with the State of Connecticut and various associated agencies.
All information posted here by the authors is factual and can be backed up by actual documentation. Some of the documentation text will be published on this blog. If information is not factual on this blog, it will be marked as an opinion, feeling, or first-person experience. The purpose of this blog is to make people aware of how neglectful and abusive the mental health system, and its tertiary arteries, are in the State of Connecticut.
If you are battling mental illness with yourself, for another, or in your own family, I strongly urge you to read the posts by this author. The hope is that by keeping up with this unfolding nightmare in Connecticut, you may not have to endure what this family has been, and is currently going through, on a daily basis. This is a story that is hard to believe — but it is as true as it gets for the mentally ill in Connecticut (and probably elsewhere too.)
We encourage all to participate in this blog and respond to this situation as it unfolds. Hopefully you will find the experience cathartic, and it will motivate you to band together and fight what is really going on with the mentally ill, and their families, in Connecticut.
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This page has the following sub pages.
- In The Beginning….
- Bipolar and Its Relationship to Employment and Daily Life
- The Connecticut Mental Health Cabinet Report
- The Burden on Caregivers of the Mentally Ill
- Mental Health Agencies & Info in Connecticut
- Important Articles to Read, Download, and Share
- Clinical Trial Information
- Resources for Those Who Support Bipolar Adults
- Resources for Those Who Support Children & Adolescents with Bipolar Disorder
- Bipolar-related News in Connecticut
Hi,
I am having my own Mental Health Nightmare in Connecticut, helping my 20 year old daughter with Bipolar Disorder.
She has health insurance through her employer, she is on disability leave right now. When I brought her to a hospital for inpatient, (Nov. 13) they agreed she needed it, but her insurance company would only agree to partial hospitalization. (This was even after being told she was a danger to herself or others. She has a history of a nearly fatal suicide attempt already, and a father and aunt who are dead from suicide… Ins. co was told this.) We had to leave, as that hosp. didnt have a PHP. Spent the next several days on the phone with every hospital in CT area and agencies. No one could even give an appointment for PHP evaluation for at least 2 weeks!
Thank god her psychiatrist (who the ins. co. never even returned his call) and her psychologist saw her 3x each during that 2 week period. I could not go to work, or anything. Plus, I was on the phone for 6 to 8 hours a day trying to get help! This is a person WITH health insurance!
Now that things are somewhat better, and I am feeling a little stronger, I may just have to make this my mission to do something about big insurance, government and mental health issues! I could really relate to that guy in New Hampshire who took hostages at Hillary Clintons headquarters in his frustration to get mental health treatment!
There is more, but I dont see an email address to email you.
Hi NOVIP:
My email address is: tar93heel@yahoo.com. Please feel free to email me and hopefully we can meet and help each other out! I am so sorry you have gone through your ordeal with your daughter, and I have also been through the same situation with our son. Please contact the CT Insurance Commissioner’s Office and let them know what happened. Since Bipolar illness is a biological condition, it is covered under what is called parity law. (File a formal complaint against the Insurance company.)
That means that your daughter should have had no problem getting all the medical assistance she needed. A biological illness is one that is something you are born with — in other words — your daughter has no control over having that illness, therefore, health insurance companies must cover the treatments necessary, including, and up to, hospitalization — and not just partial hospitalization!
Hope this helps, and I hope we can talk soon!
Take care, and give your daughter a big hug!
Moosie
From SchaperowPsychologyCenter.com director:
In treating people after the Mental Health Parity Law took effect, I’ve learned that this law has more holes in it than Swiss Cheese. I have listed some of the examples:
1. Only some insurance plans contain Mental Health Parity (it excludes private plans, some non-state plans, etc.).
Those with parity:
1. Exclude provider parity, meaning:
a. Providers who haven’t needed the business enough to join the panels will either not be covered, or will be covered with out of network benefits only (instead of major medical full coverage).
b. Providers without the credentials of the medical directors of many plans will be less covered than those with (typically an M.D. or D.O.):
i. For example, MHN (Healthnet) requires paperwork every 10 sessions by non-M.D. providers of mental health, which is time consuming and arduous, disallowing the provider from giving full attention to the actual case and instead focusing on redundant paperwork.
ii. Non M.D./D.O. providers will be reimbursed less in-network, meaning they must see many more patients to make up for this substantial pay reduction (imagine if suddenly your accountant/lawyer/physician got a 50% pay-cut!). And out-of-network, you’ll get less reimbursement, by as much as 50%, making it less affordable to see the more experienced people who typically charge what their M.D./D.O. counterparts charge.
2. Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, even Century Preferred, requires even more frequent paperwork, which often can’t be honestly done w/o patient participation, wasting sessions as often as every 4th.
3. I have a Bipolar client whom I saw twice per week, but then her Anthem Century Preferred plan cut it back to once per week. I sought a peer review through the appeals process, but they actually sent it off to non-peers (people w/o my credentials in family therapy) who held up the denial. This goes against my interpretation of the state statute, but the state/insurer was of no help when I alone tried to fight it.
4. I went so far as to go in person, unreimbursed, to the Anthem Medical Director to try and get my services covered better for my client’s Mom, but he denied me parity with people w/his credentials, even though I had much more therapy training (though clearly not medicine training) than most of the psychiatrists. I ultimately decided to give a deal to the clients by conditionally waiving part of their balance, but that then makes it harder on me to give them my all.
5. Quite some time after this incident with Blue Cross, for another client I was seeing under Blue Cross’s contracted out mental health HMO, Value Options, I was audited. I was never told why, but I had to then spend ~50 hours dealing w/the audit process. In the end it was determined that not only did I bill accurately for the mostpart, but where I made errors, I actually underbilled, so in the end Value Options had to send me a check for about $24. So, I earned $.48/hr. from the whole process. Do you have any idea how much good I could have done w/that time for my existing clients if I didn’t go through that audit?
6. Aetna used to cover all providers the same out of network, but in the fall of ‘06 they changed their policy and reimbursed their clients 40% less for the majority of mental health practitioners, w/o regard to the quality and training of those who got the reduction. Even if that saves Aetna $ in the short-run, if people don’t use the best providers as often due to finances, there can be much bigger and more costly problems that can cost Aetna more in the long-term.
7. Utilization management is not or hardly affected by the laws, since insurers can still place policies and do what they want for the mostpart, such as with a Bipolar Disordered person needing hospitalization, the insurer can say if someone isn’t actively trying to kill themselves or others, then they can’t get hospitalization. Sure the patient may attempt suicide and succeed at it a few days later when home at night, but still this is just how it works. Similarly, the insurer can say twice per week therapy only when in a crisis, *as they define it*, which means that the therapist has little to no say in what is defined as a crisis.
8. If you apply for an insurance plan individually, and you’ve had mental health history, most of the plans will deny you.
9. Solutions: I think the two solutions are:
a. Returning to pre-HMO/PPO days to when plans basically covered the coverable services without a a strong discrimination between types of providers. They also allowed more time in hospitals, etc.
b. Change insurance plans to what they were conceived of, at one time, catastrophic coverage. This can reduce premiums paid by individuals/employers, thus allowing more ability of individuals to seek out the healthcare they want. The closest we have are high deductible plans that can combine with a Health Savings Account. This combination gives people the ability to see who they want for how long they want, but the cost is shifted to the patients directly while they save indirectly through lowered priced premiums.
Sam Schaperow, MSMFT, LMFT
Hi,
I’ve been reading with interest your story dealing with mental health care in CT. I thought you and your readers might be interested in the following resource: http://www.yourcandidatesyourhealth.org is a voter education initiative which asks Congressional and Presidential candidates their stances on health issues, including a question on mental health coverage. Hopefully voters will use this tool to inform themselves about how Representatives and Senators from CT view mental health care….and affect change in the coming years.
URGENT!!! Missing Connecticut Woman!!! Please go to the following link to view the flyer for a “Hot Case,” in other words, a missing person case that has JUST OCCURED in Bridgeport, CT. All the information is in the flyer, and you can download it an print it and disseminate the information. The link is: http://connecticutnightmare.wordpress.com/ The link is at the top of the page.
Thank you! We need to locate this woman immediately!