This happened to me and I found the practice extremely deceptive. In California it is nearly impossible to find therapy or similar services that don’t charge m

This happened to me and I found the practice extremely deceptive. In California it is nearly impossible to find therapy or similar services that don’t charge much more than the per service maximums allowed by Anthem Blue Cross (and likely others). This is primarily about out-of-network care, but good luck finding a competent therapist in-network in the Bay Area. For example, the max paid for a therapy visit might be $120 while the providers typically charge $160-180/session. On my plan, out-of-network providers were supposed to be 70% covered but I only learned after the fact that coverage was 70% up to the plan max for the stated service. How was one to know the plan max per service? Therein lies the trick, they won’t tell you until you are on the plan and even then you cannot simply ask for a list of limits by service. You have to ask one by one after you have already committed to the plan. The plan providers do not proactively disclose even the existence of these per service limits during open enrollment, and certainly not the detailed limits. The plan providers continue to do this year after year despite knowing full well that their limits are well below market rates. As a result predicting out of pocket costs for therapy or other mental health services is next to impossible. It feels fraudulent and deceptive even though I suspect they have excellent lawyers who keep them coloring just inside the lines so as not to get sued. Still, I sometimes wonder if a class-action lawsuit might be the best solution.