US - Hooked, hoodwinked: Some drug rehabs aim for relapse and money

[poledriver]

Hooked, hoodwinked: Some drug rehabs aim for relapse and money

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. (AP) — The Reflections treatment center looked like just the place for Michelle Holley's youngest daughter to kick heroin. Instead, as with dozens of other addiction treatment centers in Florida, the owner was more interested in defrauding insurance companies by keeping his patients hooked, her family says.

"It looked fine. They were saying all the right things to me. I could not help my child so I trusted them to help my child," Holley said.

Instead, the center refused to give 19-year-old Jaime Holley her prescription medicine when she left, forcing her to use illegal drugs to avoid acute withdrawal symptoms, her mother said. She died of a heroin overdose last November. "Right to my face they lied to me, and I believed them."

Rather than working to get people well, a growing number of unscrupulous industry players are focusing on getting patients to relapse so that insurance dollars keep rolling in, according to law enforcement officials, treatment experts and people trying to beat their addictions.



"It's terrible right now. I don't know of any business that wants to kill its customers, but this one does," said Timothy Schnellenberger, who has worked for years in running addiction recovery centers in Florida. "It really breaks my heart. Kids are dying left and right."

Reflections and Journey — both centers owned by Kenneth Chatman — are shuttered now, and Chatman is serving a 27-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to health care fraud and money laundering, but that's little comfort to Holley, who described her daughter's ordeal in an interview.

"I couldn't fix it. And as a parent, I wanted to fix it," she said, trying to contain her tears as she looked through her daughter's pictures and Mother's Day cards.

As drug addiction destroys families across America, "there's a need for a positive, vibrant recovery network to help people get off of opioids," said State Attorney Dave Aronberg, chief prosecutor in Palm Beach County. "You can't just arrest your way out of this problem."

Cont. (with comments) -

https://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=1...nt-centers-keep-addicts-hooked-for-insurance-

 

[LucidSDreamr]

Its nice to hear that that such a stiff sentence was handed to the rehab owner.

Not that parents would know this, but sending your kids to the middle of prescription pill and crack capital of the US isn't going to produce good results

 

[David Wooderson]

My first attempt at drug rehabilitation, with no money and no insurance, had me detox in a state mental asylum to then be let out to a residential halfway house where I could smell the crack smoke from the street. It was no suprise the intake coordinator looked like this guy only with glasses:

My last attempt at recovery was with A+ insurance, where I rehabbed with wealthy addicts, when admitted into the facility I was told to bring my Rx's (thinking they would destroy them), and when I left the staff had put my nearly full bottles of pills on the very top of my belongings in my bag....

I'm glad that I discovered those pills with family as I had no chance to even consider doing anything but flushing them down the toilet, but otherwise they would have gotten a repeat customer in a matter of weeks.

The whole system at every level is a giant rip off, I highly suggest detoxing in a medical environment for personal safety, but everything else revolving around drug recovery is a giant scam.

 

[cj]

I was expecting to see the rehab I went too in del Ray. That town is beyond shady. It's crazy.

 

[Jabberwocky]

This is just a rather extreme example of issues this industry has. Really the whole rehab industry is fucked. So. Much. Money.

Meaningful support is nearly impossible to provide drug users, whether addicts or otherwise, under the current drug policy regime. I often feel like we are best off taking care of ourselves, relying on family, etc. unfortunately most people and their families don't know what to do in terms of finding their own support, which is again largely a product of the policies we have had domestically and pushed on the rest of the world vilifying drugs and drug users.