“The man’s boss had berated at him, Mr. McNally said: “Don’t you know — this stuff is liquid gold?”
When I saw the title of the New York Times article, “In Pursuit of Liquid Gold”, I assumed the article would discuss a drug that dealers were able to make a lot of profit from. What I did not expect was that the article would actually be talking about the enormous amount of money drug testing industries were making by scamming people in rehab centers and that the “liquid gold” was urine. For most people, rehabilitation is tough to afford; furthermore, companies are further exploiting people who are seeking help with their addiction.
By 2010, both the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act and the Affordable Care Act had been passed which allowed for more widespread insurance and more insurance benefits (Segal 2017). Due to the fact that millions more Americans were now insured, many more people were able to seek rehabilitation and treatment due to the sudden affordability. However, many drug treatment centers started illegally using additional insurance money to pay sober-home owners to refer patients to their centers while they underwent therapy (Alvarez, 2017). The sober-home owners often pocketed this money or used it to further attract more people by enhancing their experience through nicer amenities or even often drug (Alvarez, 2017)s.
Rather than offering better treatment, these sober-home owners became so focused on turning a profit that they would often try to trap patients by encouraging them to relapse. In most states, the standards for managing a sober home are very low and even basic information about these businesses is not publicly available. For example, in Florida, which has been identified as a state with few rules, a man who had recently been addicted was given a job as a manager of a sober living home, just two weeks after he completed his basic training (Segal, 2017). The corruption also extended to treatment centers and labs as they overbill insurance companies and the families of patients for unnecessary tests. According to one article in the New York Times, It is common for clinics and labs to charge over $4,000 per test and to test clients multiple times per week (Segal, 2017). One patient said that they were lucky it didn’t cost them more than “$25,000 for Suboxone, $16,000 of doctor appointments, $200,000 paid by insurance” (Moore, 2018), Another patient was billed $260,000 for just a couple months of treatment (Segal, 2017).
Due to differences in state laws, it has been hard to eliminate corruption in the drug rehabilitation industry. For example, sober homes are categorized as group homes for disabled in Florida (Alvarez, 2017). This complicates the legal situation and makes it harder to prosecute sober-homes. The Florida legislature has amended the Patient Brokering Act, which stiffens penalties for patient brokering and fraudulent marketing, in an attempt to address this, but there remains a lot of confusion about which laws apply in what cases (Alvarez, 2017).
References
Alvarez, L. (2017, June 20). Haven for Recovering Addicts Now Profits From Their Relapses. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/20/us/delray-beach- addiction.html Moore, L. (2018, July 26). Clean, Sober and $41,000 Deep in Out-of-Pocket Addiction Recovery Costs. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/26/reader- center/costs-of-drug-rehab.html Segal, D. (2017, December 27). City of Addict Entrepreneurs. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/new-drug- rehabs.html?mtrref=undefined Segal, D. (2017, December 27). In Pursuit of Liquid Gold. Retrieved July 21, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/27/business/urine-test-cost.html
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