Patients covered by Michigan\u2019s largest insurer will lose access to limited-license mental health professionals that serve in private practice, effective March 1
\nBlue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan says the decision ensures quality of care and aligns with its other products
\nTherapists say Blue Cross is by far the state\u2019s largest insurer for limited-license therapists<\/p>\n
Thousands of Michiganders could lose access to their mental health providers under a new Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Effective March 1, the state\u2019s largest insurer will no longer cover limited-license therapists who practice in private offices. Michigan has about 13,000 social workers, counselors, psychologists, and family and marriage therapists, according to one estimate, with an unknown number affected by the end of the longstanding Blue Cross benefit.<\/p>\n
Some therapists accused Blue Cross of trying to narrow access to curb costs amid a rising demand for mental health services.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not true, said Dr. Amy Milewski, the insurer\u2019s associate chief medical officer and vice president of clinical partnerships.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Rather, the change in the so-called \u201cincident-to\u201d billing policy will require newly minted therapists to train toward their full license in a hospital, in \u201chundreds of\u201d accredited outpatient psychiatric centers or through a local Community Mental Health agency, she told Bridge Michigan Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Oversight and quality standards are baked into the design of those facilities, ensuring quality counseling for patients, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not a cost decision,\u201d Milewski said, \u201cthis was a quality-of-care decision.\u201d<\/p>\n
Related: <\/p>\n
If a private practice wants to continue to be able to be reimbursed for their limited-license employees, Milewski said, they can work toward accreditation as an outpatient psychiatric center \u2014 a move that would require them to add certain staff, such as a psychiatrist, she acknowledged.<\/p>\n
![\"studio](\"https:\/\/bridgemi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/06102026_amy_milewski_courtesy.jpg\")
A shift in coverage by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan is driven by quality of care, said Dr. Amy Milewski, the insurer\u2019s associate chief medical officer and vice president of clinical partnerships. (Courtesy Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan)<\/p>\n
Moreover, the new policy will align with long-time practices by Blue Care Network, the Blues\u2019 HMO product, which Milewski said has never covered limited-license mental health professionals. It also does not impact people covered by Blues\u2019 Medicaid policies.<\/p>\n
In deciding the change, the Blues considered its network adequacy, initially concerned that the policy would strip beneficiaries of services, Milewski said.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, she said, the Blues wanted therapy to \u201chappen in a place where we’ve got the right structure to ensure that our patients are getting the best care possible.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear how other insurers cover limited-license therapists.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s because coverage varies among insurers and by policies, and the details of contracts between carriers and providers are confidential, said Dominick Pallone, executive director of the Michigan Association of Health Plans, which represents most remaining insurers in Michigan.<\/p>\n
Still, several therapists told Bridge that Blue Cross is by far the state\u2019s largest insurer for limited-license therapists. And Blue Cross holds nearly 70% of the state\u2019s commercial market, said Pallone.<\/p>\n
“The big takeaway is that this will sink some practices,\u201d said Jacob Moon, owner of Grand Rapids-based Relational Therapy Collective.<\/p>\n
Offices simply can\u2019t afford \u2014 and limited-license therapists can\u2019t afford \u2014 to provide services for which they normally would be reimbursed at least $60, but often more than $150 a session, said Gina Merritt, therapist and owner of Allendale-based Solace Counseling Services.<\/p>\n
Two of her limited-license staff are therapists rotating through Allendale and Coopersville schools, where some students face past traumas, current food and housing uncertainty and home lives with parents who have their own mental health issues.<\/p>\n
On top of those stresses, dozens of those children with Blue Cross coverage will now lose access to their therapists, forcing families to scramble to find a replacement, she said.<\/p>\n
Downstream, the new policy may force some providers to close their doors as reimbursements dry up for staff with limited licenses and they fight over a limited number of fully-licensed staff, said Moon.<\/p>\n
Moon also employs limited-license staff.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will have to let them go \u2014 not right at this second, but in March,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Angry, frustrated\u00a0<\/p>\n
He and others say the move is another squeeze on providers and patients as health care costs increase while major players continue to vie for profits \u2014 or arguably survival \u2014 in an uncertain ecosystem.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt will be more profitable if they take more people out of the market,\u201d said Robb Kornoelje, founder of The Truism Center, a Grand Rapids-based care network where 75 therapists working in nine locations and online held 36,000 appointments last year.<\/p>\n
Kornoelje estimated that 250 clients of Truism’s 22 limited-license therapists will lose insurance coverage after the March 1 policy is effective.<\/p>\n
Limiting access, he said, \u201ccan\u2019t be about care.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blues alerted providers<\/a> to the change May 29 \u2014 just months after the insurer publicly fought<\/a> with Michigan Medicine over its provider contract, leaving thousands with worries they\u2019d lose their doctors as of July 1. (The dispute was settled<\/a> last month.)<\/p>\n Milewski reiterated, in response to the criticisms: Quality-of-care, not the bottom line, drove the decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n And alerting providers now gives them nine months\u2019 notice to make plans, she noted.<\/p>\n Finding another therapist won\u2019t be easy in a state with severe shortages in mental health workers \u2014 from psychiatrists<\/a> to social workers to front lines staff<\/a> in residential mental health settings.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are swamped all the time,\u201d said Merritt in Allendale. \u201cThere just isn\u2019t any wiggle room. We\u2019re all just super busy.\u201d<\/p>\n Initial panic at the May 29 notice of the policy change has given way to anger, she said: \u201cYou\u2019re messing with the future of the profession and people who need mental health services.\u201d<\/p>\n And changing providers can be traumatic, especially for patients working with long-time therapy.<\/p>\n \u201cTherapy is based on a relationship that’s at the core of what makes it work. What we do is the relationship between the provider and the client,\u201d said Chris DeBoer, president Michigan Mental Health Counselors Association, which estimates there are about 13,000 limited-license providers in Michigan.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I’m depressed and I just lose my therapist, maybe I don’t know what to do,\u201d he said. The thinking might be \u201cI’m just not going to do therapy anymore.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n DeBoer is also clinical director of Lansing area-based Spring Forest Counseling, which offers services through 50 social workers, professional counselors, psychologists, 16 of whom practice with a limited license. Another half-dozen or so began with limited licenses in their early years as they undertook the necessary hours toward full licensing<\/p>\n Cutting off the ability to be reimbursed for services as a limited license practitioner means constricting Michigan as a training ground for future therapists, DeBoer and others said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou’re cutting off a pipeline for these practitioners to become fully licensed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n This <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/bridgemi.com\/michigan-health-watch\/michigan-blue-cross-to-limit-mental-health-benefit-will-thousands-lose-care\/”>article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/bridgemi.com”>Bridge Michigan<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=”_blank” href=”https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nd\/4.0\/”>Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<img src=”https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bridgemi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/cropped-android-chrome-192×192-1.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1″ style=”width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;”><\/p>\n <img id=”republication-tracker-tool-source” src=”https:\/\/bridgemi.com\/?republication-pixel=true&post=77356&ga4=G-1E2G9MSHX5″ style=”width:1px;height:1px;”><script> PARSELY = { autotrack: false, onload: function() { PARSELY.beacon.trackPageView({ url: “https:\/\/bridgemi.com\/michigan-health-watch\/michigan-blue-cross-to-limit-mental-health-benefit-will-thousands-lose-care\/”, urlref: window.location.href }); } } <\/script> <script id=”parsely-cfg” src=”\/\/cdn.parsely.com\/keys\/bridgemi.com\/p.js”><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"by Robin Erb, Bridge Michigan June 11, 2026 Patients covered by Michigan\u2019s largest insurer will lose access to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":698440,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,74674],"class_list":["post-698439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-mental-health-in-michigan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=698439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/698439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/698440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=698439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=698439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=698439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"close](\"https:\/\/bridgemi.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/09102026_Gina_merritt_courtesy-1024x995.jpg\")
Dozens of youth, many of them students at Allendale and Coopersville schools, will lose access to their therapists if a Blue Cross policy takes effect March 1 as expected, said Gina Merritt, therapist and owner of Allendale-based Solace Counseling Services. (Courtesy Gina Merritt)<\/p>\n