Financial Exchange
Opting Out of the Insurance Game:
A Heart-Centered Approach to Our Exchange
When setting up Torch & Key, one of my most intentional decisions was to step away from the traditional medical-insurance system. While insurance has its place, the corporate “insurance game” fundamentally clashes with a liberation and decolonial framework of healing. Insurance companies operate on a model of rigid optimization and surveillance. They force clinicians to give you a clinical diagnosis just to justify your care, dictate how many sessions you are allowed to have, and demand dense paperwork that reduces your deeply human experience of grief or trauma to a set of cold, billable codes.
Decolonizing mental health means refusing to let a corporate spreadsheet determine the value, depth, or pacing of your healing.
By staying independent of insurance panels, I am able to offer you a space that is entirely confidential, unhurried, and responsive to you, not a corporate gatekeeper. This choice changes how we handle the financial exchange for counseling. Instead of enforcing a rigid, unyielding fee structure that acts as a barrier to care, I choose a path of mutual trust, compassion, and heart-centered community care.
Do right and risk the consequenses.
Sam Houston
Exchange Practices
Our financial arrangement will be a continual, transparent conversation based on a flexible fee structure that genuinely reflects your current financial circumstances. If your financial landscape shifts—whether due to a job change, a life transition, or systemic hardships—we talk about it openly. We find a sustainable balance that honors the 22 years of experience, training, degrees, and energy I bring to our sessions, while deeply respecting your economic reality. This is care rooted in relational equity and true liberation—where our exchange is built on mutual respect and humanity, rather than institutional rigidity.
Using Your Benefits: While I do not bill traditional insurance companies, please know that I can absolutely accept Health Savings Account (HSA) and Flexible Spending Account (FSA) cards as forms of payment. This allows you to still use your pre-tax healthcare dollars to invest in your therapy, completely independent of the insurance game.
We will handle the financial piece of our work together openly and honestly during a free 15-minute initial consultation.