Insurance company’s specialty Insurance provides custom risk transfer solutions against various problems. Despite such empathetic provisions insurance agencies do not extend their solutions to risks pertaining to your mental health. This step taken by many insurance agencies has faced contempt of their clients to an extent. Yet the mental health domain remains untouched by the insurance companies by and large. There are quite a few practical reasons that bar an insurance agency from covering psychiatric illnesses. These arguments may help one to realise why getting your mental health covered is beyond the scope of insurance companies.
Duration of treatment highly uncertain
The human mind is a strange entity that remains unfathomed by any professional psychologist or psychiatrist. Each mind functions differently from the other, and each individual requires a unique solution for their psychiatric illness. Even though doctors have a way to treat psychiatric illnesses, its success rate remains dubious. The duration of a person’s psychiatric treatment varies from person to person. This happens because a patient may not respond to the standard treatment and may require further sessions. For an insurance agency, then, it becomes difficult to analyse the patient’s problem and come up with a fool proof policy that can be used by all. It is this uncertainty of the treatment process that keeps an insurance company from covering mental health. Even if the insurance agent is convinced of the patient’s total curability, a psychiatrist may come up with a stronger argument to continue the treatment. This is because there are high chances of psychiatric problems to relapse and a seemingly cured patient cannot be discharged easily.
Difficulty in analysing the allocation of funds
The monetary factor of psychiatric treatment cannot be ascertained due to various reasons. You may evaluate the cost of getting various physical illnesses treated, but the same rule cannot be applied to the treatment of mental health. At times patients get cured with proper medication and do not require therapy. This pushes an insurance agency into the dilemma regarding how much value to be attached to the returns policy. No two persons will have the same demand. Policies are fixed and cannot be altered according to a patient’s interests. It becomes difficult for an agency to come up with one policy that could suit all psychiatric illnesses. Cases with the damages too serious or too insignificant compared to the policy coverage may lead to severe harassment.
Fear of quackery
An insurance company may devise policies, but they cannot instruct you as to how you may utilise your funds. There are many fraudulent enterprises that promise to treat psychiatric illness through strange and preposterous methods. There are quake doctors who may magnify a patient’s simple issue to strip them of their money. An insurance company cannot and will not entertain quackery on any grounds. A patient may, on the other hand, be unable to spot the inadequacy because, in the end, you only want to get cured. This difference in interests may result in serious tiffs between the agency and the client.
Endnote
It is not easy for an insurance company to prioritise an issue which has so many downsides and the recovery rate of which is highly incomprehensible. These are the very reasons because of which insurance agencies prefer not to cover issues or risks pertaining to psychiatric illnesses.
