Hooked, Hoodwinked: Some Drug Rehabs Aim For Relapse And High Blood Pressure
The Reflections treatment
center looked like just the place for Michelle Holley's youngest daughter to
kick heroin. Instead, as with dozens of other Florida substance abuse treatment
facilities, the owner was more interested in defrauding insurance companies by
keeping addicts 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.
"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."
It's a $1
billion business in Palm Beach County alone, federal officials
say.
Florida has
the most sober homes per capita of any state, said David Sheridan, President of
the National Alliance for Recovery Residences. Opioid treatment fraud has
surfaced in California and Arizona, but Florida stands out, in part because so
many people come for treatment.
Two people
overdose on opioids every day in Palm Beach County, mainly from heroin laced
with the synthetic drug fentanyl, investigators say. Statewide, deaths from
this combination rose 75 percent in 2015 as more
than 2,500 people died in Florida from opioid-related overdoses, according to
the state medical examiner.
One
operation alone—the Real Life Recovery Delray treatment center and the Halfway
There Florida home—collected almost $19 million by fraudulently billing insurance companies for
$58 million over four years, according to the FBI. That case has not yet gone
to trial.
The FBI
affidavit said the fraud included unnecessary or faked urinalysis samples,
double-billing, and paying kickbacks to patients in the form of gift cards,
trips to casinos and strip clubs, and free airline tickets. Other tactics
included paying "patient brokers" to illegally direct addicts to particular
facilities.
Chatman's
patients were given drugs to trigger a positive drug test so they could be
considered in "relapse" when their insurance coverage was about to
expire. Court documents say he induced some female patients into prostitution
for free rent at his sober home, and confiscated car keys, cellphones and prescription
medications.
"They
don't care if you die. They just want to keep swiping that insurance card so
they can keep getting money out of you," said Blake Oppenheimer of
Louisville, Kentucky, who was ordered into treatment, and landed in a center
that was shut down for fraud. "I felt like I was something in a store that
was just trying to be sold over and over again."
Fraudulent
operators are exploiting a web of state and federal laws that make oversight
difficult. Addicts are protected by the Americans With Disabilities Act and
health privacy laws. With children up to age 26 now covered under their
parents' insurance, there's more money to be made.
Oppenheimer,
23, is now at Schnellenberger's Recovery Boot Camp, and hopes someday to return
to college to study neuroscience. "This
is like the last house on the block for me," he said. "This is my
last opportunity, and I've got to use it."
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