Practice Guides: Medicare, MHC Payment & Counseling Compact | CIN
Center for
Integrative Neuroscience The guides. Free, dated, sourced.

The guides

Free guides to Medicare and the Compact.

How counselors won Medicare, what it covers, where the Compact stands, and the manuals it all comes from. Free, dated, and sourced, so you can cite it.

Figure · the path to Medicare

How counselors gained Medicare coverage.

Counselors were the largest licensed mental health workforce Medicare would not pay. This is how that changed, as documented in the manual.

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Figure · covered services

What Medicare Part B pays a counselor to do.

Since January 2024, eligible mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists may enroll and bill Medicare independently under their own NPI.

75%

Medicare Part B pays MHCs and MFTs 75% of what a clinical psychologist is paid under the Physician Fee Schedule. Do not substitute the payment percentage used for other practitioner categories.

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Source: CMS, Marriage and Family Therapists & Mental Health Counselors, verified August 8, 2026. Educational information, not billing advice.

Figure · the Counseling Compact

One home license. A growing path across state lines.

The Compact does not create one nationwide license. An eligible counselor keeps a home-state license and applies for a privilege to practice in each participating remote state where the client is located. Both states must be live, and the counselor must follow the remote state’s rules.

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Official status checked August 8, 2026: 39 member jurisdictions; Arizona, Minnesota and Ohio were live for eligible privilege applications, with current routes depending on the counselor’s home state. Michigan had legislation filed. Confirm the official live map before relying on a privilege.

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Figures as compiled in the manual’s sources. Membership keeps growing; the Compact’s own site is the authority as states flip on. You still have to follow each state’s rules while practicing there.

The books it comes from

Read the full guides.

Medicare Post 2025 and ICD-11 in America standing together at the institute

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They are free. Ask, and we send them →

The reference shelf

Check us against the sources.

Everything we publish points back to a primary source. These are the ones we cite most, free and official.

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