Four payers now have enough reports to compare their own codes against each
other, and the 45-minute session is the expensive one to book. BCBS pays a
reported median of $83 for a 90834 against $125 for a 90837, a gap of $42.
Optum/UHC gives up $37, Aetna $25, Cigna $19.

The intake goes the other way at three of the four. Aetna reports a 90791
median of $125 against a 90837 median of $122, Cigna $106 against $95, and
Optum/UHC $127 against $116. BCBS is the exception, paying $119 for an intake
against $125 for the hour.

Every one of those figures now has a page, with the state, route and license
splits behind it:

https://therapistrates.org/rates/payer/bcbs/90834/
https://therapistrates.org/rates/payer/aetna/90791/

Therapists submitted 16 rates in September, bringing the dataset to 663 rows.
The launch week was the launch week; the table keeps growing at a few reports
a day. The median reported 90837 across all payers is $115.

Also new since the August report:

- A rate checker on every payer, state and platform page. Type what you were
offered and it tells you where that sits among the reports, with the middle-half
range and the Medicare figure for your license level.
- A comparison page for the question that never gets settled, whether a platform
pays more than your own contract. It depends on the payer: Headway reports run
above direct-contract reports for Aetna and Optum/UHC, and below them for BCBS
and Cigna.
- The "% of Medicare" figure now uses the schedule that applies to your license.
Master's-level clinicians are paid 75% of the Medicare amount, and the old
figure compared everyone against the psychologist rate, which made commercial
rates look about a quarter worse than they are.
- The full dataset is a plain CSV at therapistrates.org/data/, no email required,
CC-BY-4.0.

Five states still have no reports at all: Alaska, Hawaii, North Dakota, South
Dakota, West Virginia. If one of those is your contract, the form takes ninety
seconds: https://therapistrates.org/submit/

Full report: https://therapistrates.org/reports/2026-09/
The table: https://therapistrates.org/rates/
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