This practice does not participate in insurance plans.
Why People with Health Insurance Choose to Pay in Cash
Unless you’re a senior executive, the chances are that your health insurance will not cover mental health treatment until after you have met a deductible. Let’s see how this works:
Suppose your deductible for mental health care is $1,500. That means that you must spend the first $1,500 out of pocket before your insurance “kicks in.” If you were required to pay $150 per session, you would have to pay for 10 sessions before you began to benefit from your insurance, after which you would have to pay only a smaller copay.
At Delray Holistic Therapy, no clients or couples have ever needed 10 sessions or more to get exactly what they wanted from counseling or therapy. Sometimes, one or two sessions is sufficient. More commonly, 4 to 6 sessions are about average. The most challenging cases may require as many as 7 to 9 sessions. If you are not delighted with your progress after a few sessions, then Dr. Ransen will simply not accept any more of your money.
Depending on your fee on our sliding scale, at least 10 sessions would be required, if you paid in cash, before you would be eligible for coverage by your health insurance, and you would still have to pay hefty copays for each session.
In other words, almost all of our clients have completed their counseling before health insurance would even begin to pay. They actually save money by electing to pay in cash, instead of waiting for their deductibles to be reached, since 10 sessions are never needed in order for our clients to get exactly the results they were hoping for.
This simple arithmetic is not unique to Delray Holistic Therapy, but applies to any therapists who exclusively practice “brief therapy.” Most therapists expect you to schedule weekly appointments for months, if not years. Of course, they may not state it in this way. More commonly, they may say that therapy will end only when your “disorders” or “dysfunctional relationships” have been completely treated. At Delray Holistic Therapy, we don’t use words like that, and we don’t make judgments like that. Therapy ends when the client is happy and satisfied that goals have been achieved and problems solved.
Everyone is feeling the effects of the downturn in the economy. That’s why Dr. Ransen makes every possible effort to keep fees as low as possible, on a sliding scale, for those under severe financial pressure. Fees are payable in cash or by check. Dr. Ransen makes his best efforts to assist recent combat veterans, people with major disabilities, the elderly living on fixed pensions, and the long-term unemployed with the lowest fees, as low as $125, and does his best to find a fee that you can afford if you are suffering from severe financial stress.
Moreover, Dr. Ransen spends 1 to 2 hours doing research and planning for your next session each week (most therapists don’t), so you get much more for your money than just the therapy sessions.
Also, it’s important to remember that brief therapy lasts just a matter of weeks, not months or years, so the total cost to you will always be lower than it would be with old-style therapies that consume much more of your time. Dr. Ransen believes that money should not come between you and the therapy you deserve!
Please do your homework, and satisfy yourself that you are making the right choice. Before calling, see if you can find any doctors whom you might prefer in this region who have earned two therapeutic degrees and who have more than 30 years’ experience. Dr. Ransen checks every month to ensure that his fees are lower than other therapists in the region who have doctor’s degrees, decades of experience, and board certification. His clients are most appreciative, and send several gracious hand-written thank-you notes each month.
Here’s a guarantee you have probably never been offered before. If, at the end of your first session, you believe that you have wasted your time, and if you decide that you have nothing to gain from a return visit, then there will be no charge at all. Not one penny! Your fee for the first session will be waived immediately with a smile and best wishes. That’s how confident Dr. Ransen is that you will begin to experience a remarkable feeling of hope and well-being after the very first session.
Trust and good faith are at
the core of his practice.
First, therapists who accept
reimbursement from insurance companies are required to
diagnose you with some sort of “disorder,” so
you are presumed to be mentally ill from the moment you
walk in. Dr. Ransen doesn’t look for mental illnesses
or disorders, doesn’t use fancy words to
“diagnose” you, and doesn’t try to
“cure” you. Rather, he is well-trained to help
you solve difficult problems in your life,
relieve your stress,
anxiety, panic attacks,
and depression, and restore the balance in
your life, your relationships, or your
marriage.
Second, any diagnosis of a mental disorder would stick to
your health record as “psychiatric disorders”
for the rest of your life. That could make it difficult for
you to obtain jobs, loans, or health insurance in the
future, or cause your premiums to go up. Sadly, there are
people who react negatively when they see an indication
that you have received care from a mental health provider.
Because there are thousands of people who can lawfully gain
access to your health records, Dr. Ransen is strongly
committed to protecting your privacy by
adhering to a strict policy of total
confidentiality, but he cannot give you this
promise if insurance companies become involved. No
information from Dr. Ransen will find its way into your
health records unless you want it to.
Third, most health insurance policies place severe
restrictions on coverage of mental health services. For
example, you may have unusually high deductibles and
co-pays, and your coverage may be limited to a handful of
sessions per year, after which you must pay out of your
pocket, just as you would if you did not have health
insurance.
Finally, insurance companies are happy to reimburse the
cost of drugs like anti-depressants,
because they are cheaper than real psychotherapy.
Unfortunately, recent research shows that you’d be
quite lucky to find an anti-depressant that helps
more than a sugar pill. [1]
[2] And these drugs often have nasty
side-effects, including weight
gain and decreased sexual desire.
You may feel less depressed, but you may also feel
less of everything. The effects of taking
these drugs for a long time are unknown, and Dr. Ransen
refuses to treat his clients like guinea
pigs. Even if you do find a drug that seems to
help, have you wondered what will happen when you stop
taking it? Is the drug really solving anything, or just
treating your symptoms?
Dr. Ransen will gladly provide a receipt for your insurance
company if you and your insurance company request one. In
practice, there is a wide variation in the willingness of
insurance companies to reimburse customers for mental
health care.
Please feel free to call (561) 865-6112
with any other questions. You will always
receive honest, straightforward answers in plain language,
directly from Dr. Ransen, not an assistant or a back-room
records clerk.
A question you should ask yourself: Which would you prefer,
a fancy diagnosis with words you can’t even
pronounce? Or genuine help that will let you enjoy a happy
and rewarding life, without reliance on powerful drugs and
their scary side effects?
Here’s a personal disclosure from Dr. Ransen:
“I do not accept any money or gifts from
pharmaceutical companies to push their drugs or
anything else. Drugs occasionally help while you take them,
but as soon as you stop, the source of your problems is
still there. The drug company is a little richer, and you
are back where you started from. If you are among the many
who have benefited in a long-lasting way from my therapy,
then please spread the word. Therapy is my passion and my
calling. I have no other sources of income. Thank you, and
be well!”