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Obtaining mental health care can be difficult even for people who are covered by health insurance. Patients regularly deal with hurdles such as incorrect phone numbers for providers’ offices, insurers’ prior authorization requirements, month-long delays in scheduling appointments and psychiatrists who refuse to accept insurance at all, according to a series of studies by J. Wesley Boyd and colleagues at the Cambridge Health Alliance.

About one-quarter of adults living in rural parts of the U.S. were not able to get health care when they needed it during the past few years, despite having health insurance, according to new findings from a national survey made public on Tuesday.