Labor Day is a time to honor working people, but it’s also an opportunity to acknowledge that people suffer when the workers they depend on don’t get the respect they deserve.

Despite efforts to destigmatize mental-health care, major insurance companies — including Kaiser Permanente — still treat it as an inferior service, leaving too many patients without the care they are legally entitled to receive.

Insurers claim they’re the victims of a shortage of mental-health professionals . But a 2024 investigation by ProPublica found that there’s actually a shortage of therapists willing to take private insurance because reimbursement rates are much lower for mental-health providers than physical-health providers.

With fewer therapists taking insurance, ProPublica found that patients are m

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