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  Geebo 8:00 am on October 15, 2021 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: addiction recovery ( 2 ), body brokers ( 2 ), drug rehab, healthcare ( 39 ), insurance fraud ( 5 ), Scams ( 1,367 )   

  Addiction centers are still scamming patients 

  

  By Greg Collier

  Having a family member with a substance abuse problem is one of the worst experiences in life to go through. Just getting them to admit that they have a problem is a monumental step on the road to recovery. But what then? Some people choose to admit themselves to an addiction center, more commonly known as rehab. But which one? Should they stay local or go to one out of state? Should they go to one of the addiction centers advertised on daytime TV? Well, before you answer any of those questions, you should probably know about how people suffering with addiction are often scammed into entering a fraudulent program.

  Two men from Massachusetts were recently arrested for allegedly committing insurance fraud by recruiting recovering addicts into poorly run addiction centers. The pair is accused of signing up their victims to treatment centers in Florida, where the patients would receive little to no actual treatment. The men are also accused of opening insurance policies in their victims names and collecting kickbacks from the insurance claims the treatment center filed. Sometimes the insurance policies would go unpaid, which would result in the victim being put out on the street hundreds of miles from home. One of the men is even said to have recruited his victims from local recovery meetings in Massachusetts.

  Unfortunately, this is not a new type of scam. These recruiters are known as body brokers and have been doing this for a while. In past instances, some patients were even paid to relapse, so the addiction centers could continue to bill the insurance companies.

  As with any life-changing decision, take the time to do the research on any facilities you or a loved one may be considering. Do a web search with the name of the facility and the word complaint to see how previous patients felt like they were treated. The Better Business Bureau website is also a great resource for trying to separate the scammers from the legitimate facilities.

   

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  Geebo 8:01 am on October 8, 2019 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: addiction recovery ( 2 ), body brokers ( 2 ), drug rehab, healthcare ( 39 ), opioid crsis, patient brokers, Scams ( 1,367 )   

  Are opioid addiction centers just a racket? 

  

  If you’ve ever watched daytime TV for any length of time recently, you’ve probably seen commercials for various addiction treatment centers. They seem to make a lot of promises to get you or a loved one off of opioids thanks to the opioid crisis that has plagued our country. Many of them tout the benefits of their treatment programs over others or they try to use scare tactics to get you to use their facility. A number among them even boast their facility by the beach is what’s best for recovering addicts. While drug addiction is one of the hardest personal battles someone can fight, too many of these recovery centers are nothing more than fronts for insurance fraud.

  Many patients are being lured to these facilities with the promises of free airline tickets and money by people called ‘patient brokers’. Instead of receiving treatment, patients will receive little to no treatment while the facilities bill health insurance companies for charges that never occurred. Some patients will even be paid to relapse so the facilities can continue to commit insurance fraud. Florida was a hotspot for this kind of activity until the state passed anti-kickback laws to not only try to prevent this kind of fraud but gave investigators more authority to crack down on these facilities. Florida is just one state as many of these facilities have opened up all over the country.

  [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou6gYRKhnn0%5D

  A lot of these facilities take advantage of addicts and their families because in many cases the families or patients affected are too embarrassed to go to their doctor for proper rehab recommendations. There is no shame in wanting to recover from addiction. However, if you give in to shame, you or your loved one could end up in a revolving door of addiction thanks to these facilities. That’s the best-case scenario with the worst-case scenarios being that they could end up in prison or the morgue. Like any life-changing decision, take the time to research any facility that you or someone from your family could be housed in.