First, three words that cost people money
If you understand these three, you understand 90% of your bill.
Deductible
What you pay before insurance pays anything.
Copay
A flat fee per visit your plan sets. By contract, we can’t waive or discount it.
Coinsurance
Your percentage share after the deductible’s met. Your insurer sets it after we bill.
How your visit actually gets paid
Four steps. That’s it.
You come in and we treat you
We collect your copay if your plan has one.
We bill your insurance
We send the claim for you — no paperwork on your end.
Insurance decides their share
They apply your deductible and coinsurance and pay their part.
Anything left is your balance
If there’s a remainder, we’ll bill you — and we’ll always explain why.
Health insurance isn’t health care.
We’ve been quietly taught that if insurance won’t pay for it, it must not be “real” healthcare. That’s backwards — and it’s a whole chapter in Edge Cracking.
Do we take your plan?
Here’s the honest list for chiropractic care. Don’t see yours? Keep reading — you’ve still got good options.
Hurt in a car accident or at work? We treat it, but we don’t bill auto or workers’ comp. You pay at the visit and we give you everything you need for reimbursement. Rather use your health insurance? You can. Just decide early: health plans only give us a limited window to bill, often under 180 days. And it’s one or the other for each visit.
We’re in-network with
These bill straight through — nothing extra for you to do.
- Advantra Freedom
- Aetna
- American Specialty Health (ASHN)
- Berkshire Health Plans
- Capital Blue Cross (not Blue Cross Blue Shield)
- Cigna
- Coresource
- Coventry / First Health
- Golden Rule
- HealthAmerica
- Humana
- Loomis
- Meritain Health
- Most Medicare (all states)
- MultiPlan
- Oxford Health Plans
- Railroad Medicare
- Tower Health
- UMR
- Wellspan
Out-Of-Network
We can still help — here’s how.
- Highmark
- Blue Cross Blue Shield
- CareFirst
- Horizon
- Independence / IBC
- Any Other BCBS Plan
- Certain Medicare plans
- Geisinger
- Keystone
- Medicaid
- Personal Choice
- Teamsters
- UHC
- UPMC
Why A Bill Can Still Show Up — It’s Your Plan, Not Us
If a statement lands later, it’s almost always your insurance doing insurance things — not a charge we added. The usual reasons:
Your deductible isn’t met yet, so your plan counts this visit toward it — that’s how a deductible works, not an extra fee from us.
Your insurer calculates a coinsurance share after the visit, so it isn’t always collectible at the desk — it can arrive on a later statement from them.
Your insurer denied or downgraded a visit. Insurance companies make their own coverage calls — sometimes arbitrary ones — and that part is out of our hands.
You’ve hit the visit limit your plan authorized for the year. That cap is set by your insurance, not by us.
You can still come in — and still get reimbursed↑Maybe…Insurance companies are squirrelly >_<.
If we’re out-of-network with your insurance, you pay our cash rate and we hand you everything you need to file with your own carrier for reimbursement. Many plans pay you back a good chunk — you just have to submit it.
Questions people actually ask
- What’s a superbill?
- An itemized receipt with the diagnosis and procedure codes your insurer needs — the same information a clinic would send them. You’re just the one sending it.
- How much do I get back?
- Depends entirely on your plan’s out-of-network benefit. Some pay a good chunk; some pay nothing until a separate out-of-network deductible is met. Call the number on your card and ask.
- How long does it take?
- Usually a few weeks once they have it. If you haven’t heard in 30 days, call — claims genuinely do get lost, and a polite follow-up moves things along.
- Do you submit it for me?
- Not when we’re out-of-network with your plan — we can’t bill a carrier we don’t contract with. We hand you everything they need.
There’s a better way — Impact Health Sharing.
Paying a fortune for a giant deductible and a maze of “out-of-network”? With Impact, there is no out-of-network — everybody’s in. It’s what Dr. Smith uses for his own family — and offers it to eligible team members at the office.
Case in point: Dr. Smith pays less than $650/month for his own family of four, with a $2,500 deductible — and zero providers “in-network,” because there’s no network to be in or out of.
Curious if it’d save your family money? Take a look — no pressure.
Explore Impact Health Sharing →Sending us paperwork? Fax (610) 678-4747 or email office@smithcw.com. Please include the patient’s full name and date of birth.