I haven't experienced this, but I would imagine that most fee increases correlate with a 3% increase in the cost of living every year.

However, a T doubling their fees....that is a huge increase and I can imagine how much that will impact your finances if you continue to work with your T. Perhaps there is another T she can refer you to? (not that it will be easy to start over with someone new). Unfortunately that is the problem when working with Ts in training. They won't be "in training" forever and once they get their credentials, its $$$$$$.

My T charges $150 an hour, but discounts us to $125 an hour (and lets me pay whatever I can manage for the phone sessions we do). Maybe you guys can meet somewhere in the middle? A lot of Ts do some sort of sliding scale. If they are relatively new, perhaps they'd rather keep a client at a slightly lower rate than lose a client altogether? Especially if you've been working with him a while, he might want to do something, if he possibly can.

Thanks for the input. Yeah we'll definitely talk about it. I learned about it as the session was ending. Hearing your amounts, the new fee really is reasonable. It's just a bit of a change, and adds up fast. I don't think my T sets the fees directly I think they're set by the clinic.

HI,

At the end of my third year of therapy my therapist wanted to increase his fees, if it was possible. (he worded it in such a way that we were discussing it, not it was happening). Since I had just moved from going to therapy once every 2 weeks to once a week I told him that if the fees were increasing, I was going to have to go back to once every 2 weeks, (he had really encouraged me to come back more often, because i was not progressing). At the time I was paying $90.00 per hour. He suggested $120/hr for the sessions where I had insurance coverage and $90.00 for the other sessions. I stated that that was not fair to him because his costs had gone up and he had gotten more experience. So wee agreed that I paid $120.00 for insurance coverage session and $100.00 for non-insurance covered sessions. This was feasible in my budget(about $600.00 of increase over the year). Because he does give me a good price I am careful not to miss sessions and I pay at the end of every session.

Unless you are getting highly discounted therapy i can't see his fees doubling.

Can you give us an idea of what you pay now and are going to pay in the future?

Can you talk to him about it? Like an increase now of so much and then discussion it again at xmas?

When I started therapist was clear with me that i needed to let him know if money was stressful, especially if it was at the point where i was thinking of quitting because of the cost of therapy.Ass he said arangements could be made.

CNC

Thanks for all the info and support.

Sounds like there's nothing my T can do. We'll probably have to drop down to half length sessions for now, which'll suck. I could look at going somewhere else, but tbh it'd be too hard for me to leave my T atm.

I do have insurance, they say I need to submit a treatment plan and they'll decide what they want to cover. Which doesn't make me feel real hopeful. If anyone has advice on this insurance stuff I'd definitely be interested. Thanks again

Welcom, someone!

Insurance kind of depends on where you live I think. We have a plan where we could get a T not as qualified as mine is- but my T is not covered by it, so we have to pay out of pocket, 125.00 per 50 minute session. We cannot afford it but have discovered that therapy is essential part of our lives for now, so both my H and I have gotten one night a week jobs to cover the cost so that we can continue. I think it depends on how important the changes therapy will ostensibly initiate in your life, how important it is to you, how much sacrifice financially you are willing to make. Is there a way to for you to find to cover the cost so that you can get the session length that you need...? Oh, I know how hard the money factor is, and frustrating and unfair feeling. Here we are trying to find healing and have to find second jobs to finance it and so on...arg, unfair!

If your T was an intern, they do give reduced rates until they become more qualified so that is a good way to go if broke- sorry you ended up needing T for longer than it took them to get their degree... I recently looked into some consult T's and found interns who work very cheaply, but the practice said that the cost would go up when T's qualifications increased- so that should have been specified for you when you began, I would think.

BB

hi someone... welcome to the Board.

The treatment plan is filled out and submitted by your therapist not you. The insurance company will evaluate your needs and then decide to grant you what they will cover. I find it all depends on how skilled your T is in filling out the treatment plan.

TN

Thanks BB and TN,
BB I understand what you're saying. I could probably find a way to afford it if I really wanted to. Maybe I have a hard time justifying spending so much on myself. But I realize this stuff can have a pretty grand impact on my life. Maybe I need to think about it more.

TN,
I figured my T would probably be the one filling it out. But since they're kinda new at this I'm not sure how well they'll do. So I thought there might be some suggestions I could give my T. But maybe you'd need to know more details to suggest anything.

Someone... your T may be new at this but I'm sure he/she has a supervisor that they report to who is more experienced with dealing with insurance companies. The supervisor should help with this as it's important to do it right.

TN

Edit:

Thanks for the info. I talked with my insurance, they helped to ease some of my worry about it all. The treatment plan is just a form they have for the T to fill out. I guess I sort of messed up by going to an out of network provider. I just never thought I'd claim it on my insurance. If I wasn't so attached to my T, lol, I might think about switching.