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Employers cannot measure mental-health benefit value with enrollment and claims alone. A defensible scorecard follows the path from awareness to care, outcomes, and financial impact.
Commercial insurance can cover mental-health care without making it findable, timely, affordable, or sustainable. The access funnel explains why an insurance card so often fails to produce an appointment.
APA 2025: 57% of psychologists call payer admin a barrier to taking insurance. AI scribes give back about 17 minutes a week against 13 hours of prior auth.
For the exact same hour of therapy (CPT 90837), commercial negotiated rates run from $78 to $542, median $147 — and inside a single carrier, UnitedHealthcare, psychotherapy rates vary by up to 7x (Trilliant Health, 2026). A rate the clinician can't predict and the employer can't audit isn't a glitch. It's the design.