If insurance is just an entity taking over payment over for a policy holder, can’t all practices take all insurance? Why should it matter which entity is footing the bill? They’d be happy to charge me full price, regardless, and I’m not an entity with money. Trying to find a dentist that takes Medicaid is hellish.
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Can’t all practices take all insurance?
Sure.
But insurance doesn’t want that, because insurance is a business that wants to turn a profit. Accordingly insurance contracts with certain practices to receive work at a lower-than-customary rate. In exchange the insurance company tells their customers “We only cover care X at practices Y – our ‘in network providers'”
Because insurance is generally free to set such terms practice Z can’t accept that policy as payment, because the insurer will say “You’re not in our network, the patient has to pay you.”
It isn’t that the provider “won’t take” your insurance – rather it’s that the contract *you, the insured patient, signed* says your insurance doesn’t have to pay them.
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