Patient FAQs

Are you a clinician? See our FAQs for Clinicians

About Float

How does Float work?

Float is a health service payment platform that makes out-of-network benefits easy to understand and use, by taking care of the entire out-of-network process. Float will pay insurance’s portion of the bill upfront, file claims, handle reimbursement, and communicate directly with the insurance company—all patients ever need to do to is pay their portion of the bill.

If your clinician is registered for Float, you can create a Float account and use Float to pay your clinician bills. At the time of payment, you can choose from 3 service options:

Full Float: Float will file the bill with your insurance company and pay your insurance’s portion of the bill up front, so you only owe your portion (fee calculated based on your specific coverage— the average fee is $10).
Partial Float: Float will automatically file your claims with your insurance company. You pay the full session charge upfront and wait for reimbursement ($3 fee).
No Float: If you don’t have insurance (or like doing your own filing 😱) you can still use Float to pay your clinician bills as usual, without using out-of-network benefits or by handling the out-of-network process on your own, outside of the platform (free!).

Float currently enables OON claim filing and reimbursement with Aetna, Cigna, UnitedHealthcare (including Optum, Oxford and UMR) and most Blue Cross Blue Shield plans, but we are planning on adding more.

How do I sign up for Float?

If you want to use Float, the first step is to make sure your clinician has a Float account. You can share our clinician contact form with your clinician, and when we receive their information, we’ll reach out directly.

Once your clinician is registered, you can create an account at https://patients.floatfi.com/.

If I don’t have out-of-network coverage or my insurance isn’t one that Float works with, can I still use Float to pay my clinician bills?

Yes! As long as your clinician has a Float account set up, you can use Float to pay your bills.

Is using Float free?

Float has 3 service options. You select which one to use at your time of payment, or pre-select if you will use autopay.

Free! If you choose this option you can pay your clinician bill without using insurance benefits, or you can cover the reimbursement process yourself as you would without Float— by filing your claims with your insurance company, waiting for reimbursement, tracking payments and resolving any discrepancies with them directly.
Partial Float: $3 per bill. Float will file your claims with your insurance company. You still pay the full fee upfront, wait for reimbursement, and do tracking and resolution for any discrepancies on your own.
Full Float: $5-$18 per bill (the average fee is $10). This amount is calculated based on the details of your individual coverage. Your claims will be filed for you, and Float will cover your reimbursable portion up front. That means you only ever pay for the portion you are responsible for, and you never have to wait to get money back from insurance, track what's been paid back, or resolve any issues with the bill. Float’s service team will handle any follow-ups with your insurance company for you.

Can Float be used to manage in-network benefits?

Not at this time, but we're working to support in-network payments soon!

Can I pay with my HSA or FSA using Float?

Yes, you’re welcome to pay with your HSA/FSA—we encourage it. If you set an HSA/FSA as your primary payment method in Float you’ll be asked to set a backup payment method, in the case the HSA/FSA runs out.

When does Float bill?

Float uses a 7-day auto-payment schedule. When a bill is submitted from your clinician you will be notified by Float over email, and you’ll have 7 days to review the bill, choose your service tier and manually pay. After those 7 days have passed, Float will use your default payment method to pay the bill. If you have not selected a default float tier, Float will use the “file yourself” tier to process your bill. You can change your default float tier and default payment method in settings at any time.

About out-of-network benefits

What are out-of-network benefits?

Out-of-networks benefits (OON benefits) are a type of insurance coverage that will pay for a portion of the fee when you use a health practitioner that does not have a contract with your insurance company as an “in-network” provider. Not all insurance plans include OON benefits, but many do. If you are unsure whether or not you have them, you can use our Benefits Checker to find out. Most Preferred Provider Organization ("PPO") and Point-of-Service ("POS") plans include OON benefits. Exclusive Provider Organization ("EPO") and Health Maintenance Organization ("HMO") plans typically do not include OON benefits.

In general, if a patient has out-of-network coverage for a particular service, and their clinician has an out-of-network profile set up with the insurance company, patients can get some portion of their session covered by insurance.

How do I know if I have out-of-network benefits?

Use Float’s Benefits Checker to enter your insurance information and get a breakdown of your benefits.

How do I know if my out-of-network benefits can be used for a particular clinician/service?

Most of the time, if you want to make sure your insurance will cover a certain clinician or service before you submit the claim, you’ll need to call your insurance company to ask.

However, even if the service or clinician is covered, in order for a clinician’s patients to use out-of-network benefits, the insurance company needs to have certain information about the clinician on file. Many clinicians aren’t aware of this! As a result, claims may get rejected by the insurance company. Clinicians can work with the insurance company to submit this information, or, if your clinician signs up for a Float account, we’ll take care of this process for them.

If you are interested in having your clinician sign up for Float, you can share our clinician contact form with them. When we receive their information, we’ll reach out directly.

Once your clinician is registered with Float, you’ll be able to set up a Float account and get a more accurate prediction of what your coverage will be for that particular clinician.

How do I use my out-of-network benefits?

Traditionally, here’s how you use out-of-network benefits:

If your clinician has an out-of-network profile set up with your insurance company, you can ask them to give you a “superbill” when they send you the bill for their service. A superbill reports what kind of care you received, in insurance company language.
You pay the entire cost of the service to your clinician and file a claim with your insurance company. You’ll include the superbill in your claim. Some insurance companies may allow you to do this online, but for many you will still have to send the claim via physical mail.
Your insurance company will review your claim and superbill and determine how much they are willing to reimburse you for that particular session.
(See related question: How is my out-of-network reimbursement amount determined?)
Finally, the insurance company will send you your reimbursement payment. Different insurance companies send reimbursements on different schedules, so it’s difficult to predict when you’ll be paid back. Most insurance companies send the reimbursement check via physical mail. Depending on the insurance company, you also may or may not get a record of what bill the reimbursement was for, or how it was calculated. Insurance companies can also make mistakes. When the reimbursed amount is lower than what was expected it can be difficult to understand why. To ensure you were reimbursed the right amount, you have to follow up directly with your insurance company.

Float exists to help you use your out-of-network benefits without having to go through any of these steps. You can use Float just to file your claims, or you can use it to cover your insurance’s portion of the bill upfront so you can avoid the reimbursement process altogether.

What is my out-of-network deductible?

Your out-of-network deductible is the amount of money that you’ll have to pay out of pocket for any out-of-network health services before your health insurance plan will start to contribute. For example, if you have a $1,000 out-of-network deductible, you’ll be responsible for paying the first $1,000 each year before your insurance will contribute any money towards your out-of-network health bills.

Payments you make towards out-of-network services will only count towards your deductible if:

Those services are qualified— ie, if the specific service and provider are covered by your out-of-network insurance.
(See related question: How do I know if my out-of-network benefits can be used for a particular clinician/service?)
You file a claim for each service with your insurance company.

Once you have met your deductible, your insurance will typically begin paying a portion of the cost for an out-of-network service.

Most insurance plans have separate in-network and out-of-network deductibles, and the in-network deductible is lower than the out-of-network deductible. You'll need to meet your out-of-network deductible before your plan begins to cover any out-of-network services.

How is my out-of-network reimbursement amount determined?

When you file a session, your insurance company will review your claim and determine how much they are willing to reimburse you for that particular session. They’ll base this amount on 3 things:

Whether or not you have met your out-of-network deductible. Your OON deductible is the total amount of money that your insurance plan says you must spend on your own before they’ll chip in. Usually, you’ll have to pay for several sessions to meet the amount of your deductible. During this period of paying for sessions yourself, it’s important to file a claims for each session with your insurance company. If claims aren’t filed while you’re paying down your deductible, the insurance company won’t have proof that the deductible was met.
(See related question: What is my out-of-network deductible?)
The insurance company’s determination of what that service is worth (regardless of what your clinician charges). This number is sometimes called your allowable amount, and it’s the price your insurance company thinks is “Usual, customary and reasonable” for the service. Insurance companies calculate it based on the service provided, your clinicians particular license, the geographic location where the service was provided, the average cost for that service in that area, and other factors. Then they decide how much they’re willing to reimburse. Because it’s calculated based on the specific service administered, it’s difficult to determine ahead of time how much an insurance company will be willing to pay.
The co-insurance rate that’s listed in your coverage details. Your co-insurance rate is the percentage of the allowable amount (not the service charge!) that insurance says it will pay.

If you use the Full Float service tier to pay your bills, Float will update the amount you’ve paid towards your deductible in the benefits information section of the app, as well as your allowable amount and coinsurance rate as it learns more about your coverage.

What is my “allowable amount”?

Your allowable amount in out-of-network healthcare is the maximum amount that an insurance company will pay for a particular service with a particular provider. Your insurance company determines the allowable amount based on a number of factors, including usual and customary charges for the service in your area and any contracted rates that the insurance company has with other providers in the same geographic region.

Why does allowable amount matter? Allowable amount is important because it’s the amount that your insurance company considers the total cost of a service—regardless of what your clinician actually charges for it. The percentage of a service an insurance company will cover is a percentage of this allowable amount, not a percentage of the actual bill. For example, let’s assume your insurance will pay 50% of your out-of-network fees once you’ve met your deductible. If your therapist in New Jersey charges $300 for a 45-minute therapy session, but your insurance has determined the “allowable” amount for therapy in New Jersey is only $200, then once you start filing your claims with your insurance company they will only reimburse you $100 on each bill. Because insurance companies don’t determine the allowable amount until they see the bill, it oftentimes creates confusion when patients are reimbursed less than what they expected.

(See related question: What is my out-of-network deductible?)

My deductible is so high that I won’t reach it in a year, even if I file all my sessions. Why should I submit claims?

We recommend filing any eligible service with your insurance plan, because unexpected health care expenses over the course of a year can oftentimes result in people unexpectedly paying down their deductible.

Using Float

When will I get my reimbursement?

If you use Float’s Full Float service tier, you’ll never have to cover the reimbursable part of your bill at all! Float will cover your reimbursable amount up front, file your claim for you and collect the reimbursement payment from your insurance company.

If you use Float’s Partial Float service tier, Float will file your claim with your insurance company within 48 hours of your bill being paid. From that point on, the difference in reimbursement time will depend on your insurance company. After processing your claim, your insurance company will send a reimbursement check in the mail. Sometimes this can happen in as fast as 2 weeks; sometimes it can take up to 3 months.

If you use Float’s free tier and file for reimbursement on your own, you will wait anywhere from 2 weeks to 3 months for your check to arrive in the mail from your insurance company.

I selected the option to have my reimbursement mailed to me by my insurance (Partial Float service tier), but haven’t gotten my money and it’s been [2, 3 etc.] months. What happened?

Please reach out to someone on the Float team at patients@floatfi.com, and we’ll check to see if your payment was issued. Sometimes we see insurance companies send the check to the wrong person. Don’t worry! We’ll be able to fix this for you with some additional processing time.

Why does the amount I’m responsible for on my bills keep changing, when the service and the clinician are the same?

When Float pulls your benefits information from your insurance company, some of the coverage details we return are predictions. One of the main reasons we return predicted coverage amounts instead of certain ones is because we need time to learn what allowable amount your insurance has set for your service and clinician. Float won’t know for sure what your allowable amount is and your actual reimbursement will be until we’ve seen ~5 claims paid out from your insurance company. If you are using the Full Float service tier, we’ll update our predictions about your coverage in your Benefits Tracker in the settings section of the app, as we see your reimbursed amounts returned. Because Float pays your insurance’s portion of the payment for you, if we don’t predict your coverage accurately we’ll cover the difference. You may see your owed amount shift slightly over the first 5 or so bills as we learn what your insurance company will actually reimburse.
(See related question: What is my allowable amount?)

There are also scenarios in which changes from your insurance could lead to shifts in the amount you owe. Sometimes insurance plans make changes to their coverage details in the middle of the year, or have nuances that aren’t clear upfront, like limits to the amount of times a service is covered in a year. Oftentimes, insurance companies simply make mistakes when processing claims. If you pay your bills using the Full Float service option, our customer service team will follow up with your insurance company when these sorts of issues show up, and either recover the underpaid amount or update your benefits details.
(See related question: Is using Float free?)

Why don’t I see my session on my insurance portal website?

If you are using the Full Float or Partial Float service tier to have Float file your claims, it can take 1-2 weeks after paying your bill on Float for a claim to appear on your insurance company portal. If the visit still does not appear on your insurance company website after 2 weeks, please reach out to a member of the Float team at patients@floatfi.com.

Get support

Not a clinician, but want to get in touch?
If you’re a patient, connect with us at patients@floatfi.com.
General inquiries can be sent to admin@floatfi.com.