PsiAN Pushes Back on No Surprises Act

PsiAN pushes back on No Surprises Act, and stands up for therapy and therapists.

The No Surprises Act is meant to protect individuals from surprise bills from expensive medical treatments, such as surgery or air ambulance transport.  Unfortunately, the big surprise was applying this to individual mental health clinicians. In therapy, our Codes of Ethics outline how we share information on billing and terms of service up front, so there are no surprises. Forcing us to comply with this Act would be unethical, and also likely result in barriers to seeking treatment.

Here is PsiAN's letter to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), written in collaboration with the Clinical Social Work Association: PsiAN-CSWA letter to CMS

PsiAN was interviewed about this important issue, and our Co-Chair Linda Michaels was quoted about her concerns that the Act would make people less likely to seek treatment. Here's the article that ran in NPR and Kaiser Health News: Therapists say a new law requiring upfront cost estimates could discourage patients.

January 2022