Earlier in the week I responded to a post that named "reasons for choosing a private pay therapist."

I understand that counselors have different reasons for choosing their system of funding, but we also have a responsibility to frame these issues appropriately.

To add to the original post, while it may be true that private pay rates can be equal to your co-pay, it is higher in many situations.
Additionally, paying by co-pay without submitting claims to insurance would not reduce your deductible.

Choose an insurance based or employee assistance pay structure for your therapy if you're almost over your deductible, if you need your deductible lowered to make space for orher essential services, or, sometimes, if private pay is higher than your insurance rates.

Next, it should be named that the "pay now, be reimbursed later" practice of many self-pay therapists boxes out communities of people who live paycheck to paycheck. If you specialize in work with minorities then you should know how big of an issues this is.

Private pay therapists can meet their ethical responsibilities to communities in need by providing some free or reduced cost services, but the rate of this happening seems low.

Next, while it has a ton of problems and should be abolished, the medical model has some necessary protections for those with special needs and/or serious mental illness. Charging undeserved populations more because you can is an issue at several points...

...and offering only private pay would make some treatment systems inaccessible to communities who could not pay $500 or more per week for intensive outpatient services, or services for a serious mental illness.

If you only need a few sessions, if you need additional privacy protections, or if your needs will require a low level of care, then you can choose private pay for your therapy. Otherwise, choose the insurance that you paid for.

The last thing that I will say about the medical model is that it can be an indicator of quality in some places. As someone who evaluated therapists for years, I would suggest that there is a relationship between insurance credentials and quality of care.

Charging $150 a week for an adjustment disorder is a weird practice that is not cost consistent with practice, and therapists know that most people with heavier symptomatology would not afford $150+ for services each day.

This thread could go on forever, but my point is that there are no easily defined reasons for why you should choose private pay, but there are a lot of reasons why therapists should offer a variety of pay types.