Category: Addiction Treatment

Imagine that you are a healthcare criminal planning to set up a fraudulent addiction treatment center in order to profit from the suffering of people who need addiction treatment. Where would you set up your criminal addiction treatment center?

• In a place that is under heavy scrutiny from a law enforcement task force dedicated to discovering, and prosecuting scams in the treatment addiction field.
• In a place where insurance companies are intensely aware of addiction treatment center scams and make sure to make payments only to the most qualified, and ethically proven addiction treatment centers.

Or, would you open your criminal addiction treatment center in:

• A place that is not yet known for abuses in the addiction field, so they never thought of creating laws to punish scams in the addiction treatment field, nor have created a task force that targets crimes in the addiction treatment field specifically.
• A place where insurance companies have not experience high levels of fraud, so they pay claims from addiction treatment centers liberally, and without extreme scrutiny.

History has shown that when criminals in the healthcare industry have to face high levels of investigation, hard prosecution, and stiff sentences (examples A and B), they move to places where abuses have not been spotted yet. They relocate to places where law enforcement agencies, and insurance companies, are not looking for fraud, and are not equipped to prosecute it (examples C and D). It’s unfortunate that it takes abuses and victims to create increased safety, but that’s how it is. When crime, or negligence, hits a critical mass, all systems go on high alert, the focus is heightened, and protective agencies step in and establish tight and disciplined supervision that forces a level of security and safety that is not practiced when everything appears normal. That level of oversight create the safest products, the safest services, and the safest places. Unfortunately, it is true that the safest airline to fly is the one that is under scrutiny after a crash, and the safest place to go to addiction treatment is one under scrutiny for past fraud and neglect. We know this because we are experiencing it now.

In Miami, we have seen an explosion of fraud, just north of us in Broward and Palm Beach counties. An explosion that hurt people looking for the best addiction treatment, as fraudulent addiction treatment centers participated in human trafficking, and diverted internet searches to their sites by false promises and criminal techniques. As a response, the state of Florida has passed the toughest laws to punish treatment center criminals in history. Not only has the state passed these laws, but they are enforcing them. Only last week, corrupt drug rehab owner was sentenced to 27 years in prison for abuses committed in his rehab center, and he is not the only example. This is only one example of practices continuing crackdown of rehab treatment centers, drug testing laboratories, sober houses, and the people who profit from selling addicts to treatment centers. This makes Florida the riskiest state in which to commit addiction treatment center fraud. It also establishes Miami as the safest place in which to get addiction treatment.

Miami has a few addiction treatment centers. Broward and Palm Beach counties experienced an explosion of thousands of addiction treatment centers, sober living houses, and halfway houses that made it known as the “recovery capital of the world”, unfortunately this proliferation of addiction centers and sober houses also turned them into the addiction treatment fraud capital of the world: Miami was always safer. And now, it will be even safer, because we will benefit from the strong, statewide measures that threaten those that may have been crooks in Miami, or are thinking about it. So, where is the safest place to get addiction treatment in the U.S.? Miami.

The Netflix’s show “13 Reasons Why” is dangerous. It’s the story of a young woman that commits suicide. Before the suicide, she leaves behind recorded tapes explaining the reasons that pushed her to kill herself. The tapes are distributed to people in her life that contributed to her suffering, and her eventual suicide.

Here are 13 reasons why this show is dangerous:

1. It illustrates suicide as reasonable.
2. Illustrates suicide as a legitimate solution to suffering.
3. It illustrates suicide as glamorous.
4. Illustrates suicide as a way to get attention and admiration.
5. Illustrates suicide as a way to get popularity and fame.
6. Illustrates suicide as a way to get revenge on people that cause you suffering. In the show the main character’s suicide indeed leads to her getting revenge, as the people that hurt her endure suffering for the hurtful things they did to her, and one of them is driven to commit suicide himself, out of the guilt of having contributed to her suffering, and the effects that followed her suicide.
7. Presents the main character as helpless and powerless, withstanding pain and abuse without reaching out for help, and when she finally does, the professional helper that she reaches out to is portrayed as an ineffective, self-absorbed, and careless counselor.
8. Portrays both parents and professional helpers as out of touch, self-absorbed and inefficient problem solvers who deserve no trust, and from whom true problems are supposed to be hidden.
9. Portrays dependency as normal. The rejection of peers is enough to want to kill yourself.
10. Portrays lack of self-esteem. The poor character feels that she is incapable of love and affection—in spite of being smart, beautiful, articulate, and possessing a smart and witty sense of humor, yet, she is incapable of being aware of any of these attributes in her view of herself. I understand that it can be argued that teenagers suffer from such lack of self-esteem and self-doubt, but the message that suicide is a possible avenue to deal with it is dangerous.
11. Most dangerous of all, It plays to the fantasy of every person, especially a young person that considers suicide. One of the irrational fantasies that make suicide appealing is the illusion that somehow the person that commits suicide will be able to see the effects that their suicide has on others: their peers recognizing, and mourning for them, the moving memorials erected for them, and the suffering of the people that hurt them. In the show, these things actually happen, and her voice and image are present throughout the aftereffect of her suicide, and she witnesses the effect that it has on others.
12. The argument of the makers of the show that making the actual suicide scene gruesome is a deterrent to suicide, is the same reasoning that I encountered in high school that said that showing me pictures of tar covered cancerous lungs would serve as deterrent to smoking: it wasn’t, It didn’t stop me, or anyone else that I know from smoking. When children were exposed to the dangers of drugs with the “DARE” anti-drug campaigns, the result was that the campaign drew attention to drugs, and created curiosity about using drugs, not prevent it.
13. It fails to provide answers. It presents a hopeless and powerless stance when facing adversity, and disloyal, treacherous, and narcissistic characters as an example of our young people. Worst of all, it fails to assert the human attributes of courage in the face of adversity that is inherent in the human potential. It fails miserably to put in view the heroic potential of humanity. A heroic potential that has been inherent in the art, myths, and legends that have inspired our the survival instinct of our race, not its self-destruction.