The Billion-Dollar Rehab Racket

Locutus

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Jun 18, 2007
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sounds like other self-perpetuating benny hinn-like gimmicks. stugent loans and banks and colleges. oh my.



A new documentary by a former rehab insider shines a skeptical light on the tony business of high-priced addiction centers.

Until a few years ago, Greg Horvath was making around $30,000 a month as an interventionist, confronting people with drug and alcohol problems and persuading them to go to high-priced rehabs. But as he was becoming wealthier, he says, the people he was purportedly helping rarely kicked their habits, despite repeated stays at some of the best-known facilities in the U.S.

Horvath, who quit drinking in 1990 with the help of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, began to question the value of his work—and of the rehabs themselves. Four of his former clients overdosed and died after multiple trips to treatment centers, he says. The centers “paint this picture that they’re going to fix everything. These families in crisis are so vulnerable, and they want to believe what they hear.”

But in truth, Horvath says, the biggest motive of rehab facilities, some of which charged upwards of $50,000 a month, was simpler still: profit. One rehab he worked with, he said, had an employee whose job was to guide families through the process of refinancing their home to pay the tens of thousands of dollars charged for treatment. Meanwhile, he told The Daily Beast, the families he was working with— hardworking parents fearful for their children’s lives—were “getting swept away.”


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The Billion-Dollar Rehab Racket That Drains Family Savings - The Daily Beast

I spent a lot of years in smoky church basements and other assorted rooms and halls over the years. In my opinion the 'success' rate of those that went to treatment centers was a little thin to say the least. At least the poor wretches were off the streets for 28 days. Had exposure to help and fellowship should they choose to try it on for size. Some 'got it', most didn't but that's business I 'spose. Sometimes any help is better than none at all but we rarely get to see the cost of those things in the great white north.