It’s probably an EAP which essentially means they pay for a small handful of sessions (4-10 typically) outside of whatever your copay/deductible burden is (though if you have a deductible the EAP almost never applies towards it fyi). Provider network is also more limited because reimbursement is much smaller. Once the sessions have run out you’re back to figuring out how to afford it on your own. If you have a high deductible that you never meet then you’re in the same issue that you had before a month and a half of sessions that probably didn’t miraculously fix all your problems.
EAP actually gives employers less access to data than health insurance but they can still see aggregate, eg “30% of employees used EAP benefit and most common categories of concern were anxiety and stress management” (wrt all employees, not any specific one). This is obviously more of a concern if you work at a company with 10 employees and the report comes back saying 10% of employees…, obviously that’s easily de anonymized
Whereas with the health insurance benefit the employer can see icd codes utilized within the claim system sometimes depending on the situation but again broadly and not like “your” chart or claims data. All this obviously goes out the window if you sign a release for them to advocate to the insurer or a provider on your behalf of course, and then they might get all kinds of record access
I just wanna say I appreciate you taking the time to type all this out to speak directly to someone’s anxieties from a place of knowledge about how the area of concern works. Thats pretty cool :)
It’s probably an EAP which essentially means they pay for a small handful of sessions (4-10 typically) outside of whatever your copay/deductible burden is (though if you have a deductible the EAP almost never applies towards it fyi). Provider network is also more limited because reimbursement is much smaller. Once the sessions have run out you’re back to figuring out how to afford it on your own. If you have a high deductible that you never meet then you’re in the same issue that you had before a month and a half of sessions that probably didn’t miraculously fix all your problems.
EAP actually gives employers less access to data than health insurance but they can still see aggregate, eg “30% of employees used EAP benefit and most common categories of concern were anxiety and stress management” (wrt all employees, not any specific one). This is obviously more of a concern if you work at a company with 10 employees and the report comes back saying 10% of employees…, obviously that’s easily de anonymized
Whereas with the health insurance benefit the employer can see icd codes utilized within the claim system sometimes depending on the situation but again broadly and not like “your” chart or claims data. All this obviously goes out the window if you sign a release for them to advocate to the insurer or a provider on your behalf of course, and then they might get all kinds of record access
I just wanna say I appreciate you taking the time to type all this out to speak directly to someone’s anxieties from a place of knowledge about how the area of concern works. Thats pretty cool :)
Indeed! I just have vague feelings of distrust of employers, the healthcare system, etc, but it’s nice to understand it a bit more!
Totally valid! Regardless of how you decide to navigate things I hope the choice serves you well :)
Have a good one!
Eww. Yet another reason why tying health insurance to employment is a horrible idea.