Why EMTC Does
Not Accept Insurance

And how we help you use your out-of-network benefits when you have them.

We chose to remain a private-pay practice deliberately.

That choice has to do with privacy, who gets to influence decisions about your therapy, and the kind of working conditions we want for the clinicians providing that care.

We also know what private pay means in the real world. Therapy is expensive. Insurance is how many people are able to access healthcare at all.

So we want to be clear about both sides of this.

We don’t contract directly with insurance companies. If your plan includes out-of-network mental health benefits, though, you may be able to receive reimbursement for part of what you pay, and we’ll help you navigate that process rather than handing you a superbill and wishing you luck.

01 We want as few institutions as possible between you and your care.

Therapy is personal. Using insurance can bring a health plan into the payment side of that care and may require sharing certain clinical, billing, or claims information so coverage can be processed. Psychotherapy notes have stronger protections, and insurers do not automatically receive everything discussed in session.

Still, for many of the communities EMTC works alongside, questions about privacy and institutional access are not abstract. Black, trans, disabled, immigrant, and queer communities have long histories of being scrutinized, pathologized, or treated as though institutions know what is best for them.

We take that history seriously.

Private pay does not make therapy invisible or remove documentation requirements. What it does allow is less routine third-party involvement in deciding how care is paid for and what has to be justified for coverage.

That matters because therapy does not always fit neatly into a diagnosis, a crisis, or a short treatment arc. Sometimes the work is about patterns that formed over years: caregiving, hiding parts of yourself to stay connected, moving between cultures, or adapting to racism, transphobia, ableism, and family expectations.

At EMTC, we want those decisions to stay as close as possible to the person receiving care and the clinician who actually knows their story.

02 The people providing care need to be sustained too.

Room to think

Time to
keep learning

There is another reason we remain private pay that deserves more attention: the conditions therapists are working under shape the care they are able to offer.

Therapy asks for presence, thoughtfulness, emotional attention, and a willingness to stay with difficult things. We do not believe clinicians should have to sacrifice their own wellbeing in order to provide that kind of care.

At EMTC, that means building caseloads with enough room for consultation, reflection, continued learning, and recovery between demanding sessions. It also means protecting a life outside of work: relationships, community, creativity, rest, pleasure, and whatever helps someone remain a whole person rather than only a provider of care.

Abolitionist and anti-colonial frameworks ask us to pay attention to the labor a system quietly depends on. Care work has often been sustained by expecting people, particularly women and marginalized workers, to give more of themselves than is reasonable and to call that devotion.

We do not want to recreate that dynamic inside EMTC.

How clinicians are cared for becomes part of how care is practiced.

Time to
consult

A life outside
of work

03 We also know there is a contradiction here.

Private-pay therapy is not accessible to everyone. For many people, insurance is what makes therapy possible, and choosing not to contract with insurers means EMTC will be out of reach for some people.

We do not want to disguise that with language about “investing in yourself,” or pretend that private pay is somehow more ethical simply because it creates distance from insurance.

There is no clean way to step outside the systems that shape healthcare, housing, work, disability, immigration, education, and money. The question for us is where we have enough room to make a different choice, and what responsibility comes with that choice.

At EMTC, remaining private pay gives us more control over how care is structured, reduces some third-party involvement, and helps us create more sustainable working conditions for clinicians.

It also means we have to keep thinking seriously about access.

Access is not something we believe we have solved. It is something we have to keep
working on.

We want to make therapy as financially workable as we can within the structure we have chosen.

If your plan includes out-of-network mental health benefits, you may be able to receive partial reimbursement.

Our Client Care Coordinator can help you understand what to ask your insurer, what documentation EMTC can provide, and what the answers may mean for your expected cost.

We cannot guarantee what an insurance company will cover, but we can help make the process less confusing and talk openly about fees before you begin.

If EMTC is not financially workable for you, we would rather have an honest conversation about that than pressure someone into care they cannot sustain.

Talk With Our Client Care Coordinator Learn About Fees & Reimbursement

Once therapy begins, we keep helping.

You’ll pay EMTC directly for your sessions. If you choose to use out-of-network benefits, we can provide the statements or superbills your plan may require for reimbursement.

If something is confusing along the way, bring it back to us. We can help you understand where a claim needs to go, make sense of an Explanation of Benefits, or figure out what to ask if the reimbursement looks different from what you expected.

We cannot determine what your insurer ultimately covers or guarantee a particular reimbursement amount. But private pay at EMTC does not mean being handed paperwork and left to navigate the rest on your own.

There is also a privacy tradeoff worth knowing about. Submitting documentation for reimbursement brings your insurer back into the payment process, and the claim may include health and billing information.

If you are not using insurance to pay for your care, you can also request a Good Faith Estimate of expected charges. Federal rules generally require providers to provide one when requested or when qualifying services are scheduled sufficiently in advance.

What will I know before I start?

We want the financial side of therapy to be as clear as possible before and throughout your care.

You can talk with our Client Care Coordinator about:

your therapist’s fee
current clinician availability
what ongoing therapy, EMDR, Brainspotting, or an intensive might look like
what documentation EMTC can provide for out-of-network reimbursement
questions to bring to your insurer
anything else you need to understand before deciding whether care feels financially workable