Insurance Coverage
The first step is to know your child’s health insurance coverage. Your child may have:
- A commercial insurance plan, through their parent or guardian’s employer
- Medicaid through the State, also referred to as Medical Assistance (MA)
- A child could be covered by more than one insurance, and may be referred to as the primary and secondary insurance. If a child has a commercial insurance and Medicaid, the commercial insurance is the primary and needs to be accessed first and exhausted before the secondary (Medicaid) will be able to cover/authorize services.
Commercial Insurance
To begin with a commercial insurance, look on the insurance card for the number for behavioral health services to find providers that accept/are in network with this plan.
A child could be eligible for Pennsylvania Medicaid even with a commercial insurance. A child could be eligible based on a “disability” and parent income is not considered when determining eligibility. For more information and application for Pennsylvania Medicaid go to: https://www.compass.state.pa.us/compass.web/Public/CMPHome
Medical Assistance
If a child has Pennsylvania Medicaid, the behavioral health services are managed by Magellan Health Services. Some commercial insurances may also have the behavioral health services managed by a company called Magellan (referred to as private or commercial), but it is a different company from Medicaid Magellan (referred to as public).
If you are interested in applying for Medical Assistance, please click here.