Hacker News Reader

Comment by polygamous_bat | Hacker News Reader

One of the most nefarious instances of this I have seen is a "online mental health counseling" startup that was charging a non-trivial monthly recurring fee, even though it did not have any available appointments with a professional in the coming month. I had to call and haggle for half an hour on behalf of someone who signed up for the app, and only after putting in their credit card information was shown that there are no appointments.

Shame on the "startup", and absolutely disgusting that we as a civilized country allow scams targeted towards a vulnerable population to happen quite legally.

View on HN

>Shame on the "startup", and absolutely disgusting that we as a civilized country allow scams targeted towards a vulnerable population to happen quite legally.

The truly dreadful part is that this is precisely the kind of thing that people with depression, ADHD, and a host of other psychological conditions are unable to deal with.

That's the whole point of those kinds of mental health startups. Get the credit card information of people who don't have the energy or organisation skills to ensure that they cancel it, and charge them according to the contract. It's basically like the gym thing, except instead of hoping you are rich enough or lazy enough not to cancel, they hope you are ill enough not to cancel.

Had a similar problem with Thrive Market. Non refundable subscription unless you chose yearly instead of monthly then the very specific item I wanted was out of stock (among tons of other things).

Wouldn't happen to be Cerebral, would it?

I was in a similar situation and extremely irate at first when they said refunds were not an option, but fortunately it appeared to be an issue with their automated scheduling system. Once talking to an agent they were able to link me to a provider that same day.

On the whole, it's actually been a pretty good experience over the last year. Trying to get similar counseling/medication locally was an absolute nightmare at the time... with Cerebral, everything happened super fast and the counseling I got seemed on point (ADHD/insomnia). They quickly pause/resume for when I'm out of the country traveling, no unapproved charges so far.

I hope you aren't taking stimulants during the day and then benzos at night to sleep -- that can be a disaster long term.

Why don't you name them?

If I remembered their name I would 100% name and shame them publicly. Unfortunately it was a while ago during the peak of the pandemic, and I don't have any email records since I myself didn't sign up for them.

Chance are your mental health startup is also flogging your data for bucks as well.

uh, HIPAA???

TLDR: HIPAA doesn't apply because reasons. (I am neither a HIPAA expert nor a lawyer.).

"Who must comply with HIPAA": https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/190/who-must...

"Is a software vendor a business associate of a covered entity": https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/faq/256/is-softw...

For example, the GoodRX [0] and BetterHelp [1] settlements were both due to alleged violations of the FTC Act and Health Breach Notification Rule, rather than a violation of HIPAA.

[0] https://www.hipaajournal.com/court-approves-ftc-settlement-g...

[1] https://www.hipaajournal.com/betterhelp-settlement-ftc-healt...

HIPAA applies if they accept insurance.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com