Why Finding A Therapist Is Getting Harder - On Purpose
The Short Version
If you've tried to find a therapist through your insurance, you already know how it goes. You search the directory. You call. Nobody calls back. Half the people listed aren't taking new clients, don't serve your area, or haven't taken your insurance or been in practice for years. You try a few more. You give up.
This is not random. And as of 2026, it's getting structurally worse, and it's important that you as a consumer understand what's happening.
So, tl;dr first, then I'll go into detail:
There used to be a neutral nonprofit called CAQH that maintained a central database of every licensed therapist in the country. Insurance companies used it to verify credentials and build their directories. It wasn't perfect, but no single company owned it or had a financial stake in who showed up.
As of January 2026, CAQH was acquired by a group of the country's largest insurance companies - including UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna, and Humana - and rebranded as DataSpring. Those same insurers have also been heavily investing in managed platforms like Headway and Alma - networks they have a financial stake in directing clients toward.
It's worth naming something that has always been true, but is now more structurally embedded than ever: insurance companies collect your premiums whether you find a therapist or not. They get paid regardless. What has changed is that they now stand to profit more when you do find someone - as long as that someone is inside the platform they have a financial stake in, and now they control who you get pushed to as well, meaning they gain on all sides. Your ability to find the right fit - which decades of research consistently identify as the single most important factor in whether therapy actually works - was never their priority. Now it is actively in competition with their bottom line.
What that means in practice: when you search your directory looking for a specialist - someone who works specifically with trauma, grief, postpartum depression, or anxiety that has never responded to basic techniques - you may not be seeing the full picture. Experienced independent therapists who built their practices around exactly those specialties may be buried in results or missing from them altogether, while platform-affiliated providers are positioned to get top placement. There is no requirement that any of this be disclosed to you.
The problem isn't just that it's hard to find a therapist. It's that even when you're looking in the right place, the system may be quietly steering you away from the person who could actually help you most.
Keep reading for the full picture - and how I approach care and accessibility at Better Way Counseling.
..And the Longer Version
What CAQH was - and what just changed
Think of CAQH as a central filing cabinet. Every licensed therapist in the country submitted their credentials into it. Insurance companies checked that cabinet to verify who was qualified, and that data was used to populate the directories you search when you're looking for help.
It existed since 1998 as a nonprofit. Payer-influenced, bureaucratic, frustrating for clinicians to navigate - but nominally neutral. No single company owned it or had a financial stake in who showed up.
That ended in January 2026.
CAQH is now owned by a group of the country's largest insurance companies - including UnitedHealth Group, Cigna, Aetna, Elevance Health, Humana, and a coalition of Blue Cross Blue Shield plans. The board chair is a UnitedHealth Group executive. Five months after the acquisition, it was rebranded as DataSpring.
Why the conflict of interest matters for you
Those same insurance companies have also been investing in platforms like Headway and Alma - tech companies that contract directly with therapists, handle billing and credentialing on their behalf, and take a cut of every session fee.
These platforms have been criticized for cutting therapist pay significantly, limiting clinical autonomy, and raising concerns about client data practices. But they grew quickly because they made the credentialing process simpler - especially for newer clinicians who felt overwhelmed by it.
Here's the problem: the companies that now own the credentialing infrastructure are the same companies that profit when clients are directed toward their platform therapists rather than toward independent practitioners down the street, even if they take insurance.
This isn't necessarily a conspiracy. It's what happens when conflicts of interest are built into a system's ownership structure. When the same entity owns the directory and benefits from the directory pointing in a particular direction, it stops being neutral. The referee is now owned by the other team.
What this actually costs you
The practical impact is this: the therapist who is the best fit for you - who has been practicing in your community for years, who specializes in exactly what you're dealing with, who has availability - may simply not appear in your search results. Not because they aren't qualified, but because they don't benefit the companies running the system.
The clinicians most at risk of disappearing from your view are experienced independents - therapists who built their practices the traditional way, credentialing directly with insurance companies over many years. They don't have a platform intermediary advocating for their placement. If their listings are quietly deprioritized or their credentialing becomes harder to maintain in the new system, they have very little recourse. And you have no way of knowing they were ever there.
The therapists who do show up may be skilled - but they're often working inside a system that has already cut their pay and limited their clinical autonomy. That's worth knowing too, because it affects the conditions under which your care happens.
There's one more layer worth naming. The economic conditions inside insurance-based practice aren't just squeezing clinicians - they're actively pushing experienced ones out. A therapist with many years of practice and a specialized caseload isn't necessarily choosing self-pay because they prefer a certain type of client. Many of them have simply reached the point where the math no longer works: reimbursement rates that haven't kept pace with operating costs, documentation burdens that consume hours that should be clinical, and now a credentialing system owned by the very companies setting those rates - one that controls who appears in the directories those same companies operate, and that has a financial stake in pointing you somewhere else entirely. That's not a judgment on clinicians who are making it work inside the system - many of them are doing genuinely important work under difficult conditions. But it does mean that filtering your search by insurance coverage may be quietly sorting out the people who have the most experience to offer you.
What this means for the "must take insurance" filter
It's completely reasonable to want to use benefits you've been paying into. That's not the wrong instinct. But it's worth understanding that this filter may be limiting your access to experienced, available therapists in ways that have nothing to do with quality or fit - and increasingly have to do with who owns the infrastructure connecting you to care.
Therapists who practice outside of insurance aren't abandoning clients. Many of them are stepping outside a system that is no longer working in your interest - or theirs.
Better Way Counseling Statement on Access
How I think about access
Better Way Counseling was built around a core conviction: that serving your community genuinely and serving it sustainably are not competing goals - they're the same. A practice that runs itself into the ground to meet demand isn't actually serving anyone well, and one that prices itself out of reach for the people who need it most has a different problem.
What follows is how I've built toward something that holds both, the mission and the math.
Graduate clinicians: training as a value, access as an outcome
One of the things I genuinely believe in is developing new clinicians - not as a workaround, but as a professional commitment. Bringing graduate student clinicians into this practice and investing seriously in their training is part of how I understand what it means to do this work responsibly.
Graduate clinicians at Better Way Counseling work under active, structured supervision. I'm involved in every case through regular supervision meetings and case consultation - not just signing off on hours, but engaging with the clinical thinking, the decisions being made, and the development of each clinician's practice over time. That level of involvement is possible because my own caseload is intentionally limited, which creates the time and focus that real supervision requires.
If you work with one of my graduate clinicians, you're in the hands of someone who is carefully trained, closely guided, and actively supported. Graduate clinicians see clients at a reduced student rate and have flexibility to work with clients individually on fees so that cost isn't the thing that keeps someone from coming - making this one of the more genuinely accessible entry points into consistent, quality care.
Reset Sessions: built to work differently
Reset Sessions exist at Better Way Counseling because, frankly, sometimes the red tape is the biggest barrier to getting help. You shouldn’t have to provide an entire family history or pass a preliminary screening call just to get an hour of a clinician’s time. Sometimes, you just need a professional who is fully present for exactly what you’re carrying right now.
This is a deliberate departure from how insurance-based care works. To use your benefits, the system requires a diagnosis, a treatment plan, and documentation of a mental health disorder before I can even see you for a single session. That framework has its place—but it also means that if you’re functional, self-aware, and dealing with a specific, present-tense problem, the traditional model doesn’t really have a lane for you. It’s built to treat disorders, not to meet people where they are.
Reset Sessions are the lane I built for that.
They are single-session appointments—complete in one hour, with same or next-day availability. No diagnosis is required, and there is no expectation that you’ll come back next week. The "treatment plan" is simply whatever we decide in that hour together. The model is grounded in Single Session Therapy (SST), which is built specifically for focused, present-tense work: what is happening now, what you need now, and what you can leave with today.
At $125, a Reset Session is the most direct way into the room. No referral, no prior authorization, and no wait. You pick a time. You show up. You leave with something you can actually use.
Full-fee sessions: the other side of the equation
I also see clients directly, at full fee. These are private-pay sessions, so the work goes where it needs to go, at the pace that’s right for you, without a diagnosis determining the direction.
What you’re also paying for is the level of expertise I bring to the table. I’ve spent my career honing a very specific set of skills for very specific, complex problems. I take pride at being good at what I do, and the infrastructure I’ve built, and discussed here, is what allows me to stay that way. It ensures that I am emotionally healthy, mentally sharp, and fully present for every person I sit with. I protect my mental health so that I can show up for yours. You aren't getting the leftovers of a therapist who is running themselves into the ground; you're getting the best of what I have to offer.
What I want to be transparent about is this: full-fee sessions are part of how the rest of the model holds together. The reduced rates my graduate clinicians can offer, the time I’m able to invest in meaningful supervision, and the infrastructure that keeps this practice running—these things require a financially healthy practice. Full-fee clients are part of what makes that real.
"Private pay" doesn't have to mean exclusive. At Better Way Counseling, it's the other side of what makes access possible.
How the model holds together
All care at Better Way Counseling operates outside of insurance - whether that's a Reset Session, ongoing work with a graduate clinician at a reduced rate, or direct self-pay sessions with me. None of these require a diagnosis, a referral, or prior authorization. They're not charity - they're structure. A financially sustainable practice can invest in the things that make access real: the time required for meaningful supervision, the infrastructure to support a training model, and the capacity to offer rates that more people can actually afford.
Sustainability and access are not in competition here. That's a deliberate choice, and everything above is what it looks like in practice.
What I want you to know
Most people who reach out to me have already tried. They've made the calls, navigated the directories, sat with the voicemails and the waitlists and the "we're not taking new clients right now." Some of them have talked themselves out of it at least once - decided maybe it wasn't that serious, maybe they'd figure it out on their own, maybe it just wasn't meant to happen right now.
I see that. And I'm glad you're still looking.
I also want to be honest with you: with the recent changes in how insurance credentialing is being consolidated, that process is likely to get harder before it gets easier. The directories people rely on are becoming less neutral, and independent specialists are going to become harder to find through traditional search. If you've been thinking about reaching out, now is not a bad time to stop waiting.
If you're not sure whether Better Way Counseling is the right fit, ask me. I'll be honest - and if I'm not the right call, I'll do my best to help you find someone who is.
