06/06/2026
Be aware of what has been happening in our field in recent months that has insurance companies trying to siphon covered individuals away from reimbursable services and shuttle them into their own highly problematic and ineffective courses of "treatment". This is an ongoing attempt on their part to squelch out independent providers in mental health the way they have in the medical world and it's important we are reaching out to legislators and screaming this stuff from the rooftops.
In the past few weeks alone:
• BCBS Illinois began marketing a self-guided app called Learn to Live to members as a mental health benefit offering "the proven benefits of CBT." There is no therapist. There is no clinical relationship. A quiz routes members (including children as young as 13) into pre-packaged programs or "AI Coaching" for Trauma, Depression, and Substance Use. That is not CBT, nor is that an effective or safe route of "treatment" for any of those dxs.
• Aetna cut reimbursement rates for Alma-contracted therapists effective July 15. A 53-minute session will now pay the same as a 38-minute session. Doctoral-level psychologists will be paid the same rate as master's-level providers. One week after announcing those cuts, CVS/Aetna launched their own mental health platform (surprise surprise!), an AI-powered platform using single-session interventions, "predictive analytics" (wtf), and full access to session data. The same insurer that made independent practice less viable immediately announced its own competing service.
• Headway (that BCBS is heavily invested in) now requires facial recognition scanning for both clinicians and clients. They hold all credentialing, billing, and client data. The clients are not their customers, they are the product.
• They own the credentialing, the reimbursement, the platform, the data, the documentation, EVERYTHING. Confidentiality is a total thing of the past. A recent news story found that a woman's complete Talkspace therapy transcripts were subpoenaed by her former employer (who provided the access to Talkspace as an "employee benefit" and therefore were entitled to the data ) and used against her in court. Talkspace has told investors it holds one of the largest mental health data banks in the world with the goal of training an AI therapy bot.
What is happening is called vertical integration and it's been happening in the medical/pharmaceutical world for a while now. CVS is a pharmacy, a pharmacy benefits manager, a major insurer, and now they are a direct mental health provider. UnitedHealth owns Optum, which employs thousands of clinicians directly. The entity that decides what care is covered is also selling and providing the cheaper (and less effective, research-backed, and ethical) alternative it wants members to use instead.
And for those of in Illinois: insurers are already structuring around HB 1085 before it takes effect in January 2027 by pushing employers toward self-funded plans exempt from state mandates, narrowing networks to EPOs and HMOs, and making selective exclusions that cut independent practices out of exchange markets.
I encourage everyone to contact your state and federal representatives. Tell them what you are seeing on your end as a provider. Ask them to investigate vertical integration, strengthen parity enforcement, and enact real data protections for mental health information.
You can also share or copy/paste this post - get the word out! I think people don't even know this is happening, which is what the insurance companies bank on. The more clinicians who understand what is happening, the harder it is to ignore.
