Getting the Treatment You Need Despite the Affordable Care Act
The addiction treatment industry has been growing. The reason? There’s a demand for addiction treatment due to the fact that there’s a prescription drug epidemic in this country that seems to be getting worse every year. Every day in the United States, 100 people die from drug overdoses. These deaths are happening in big cities and small towns, a very large number of them due to prescription painkiller abuse. Even more worrying, when individuals can no longer afford or gain access to prescription drugs, they often turn to heroin. The number of cases of painkiller and heroin addiction we currently treat has become staggering.
Yet, as nearly fifteen thousand people a year die from prescription drug overdoses, access to the treatment that individuals so desperately need is coming under attack, from of all places, the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
At Cliffside Malibu, we treat all sorts of people: the super wealthy, CEOs , celebrities, Wall Street executives, and 40% middle-class population whose insurance covered high quality treatment. When the ACA went into effect on January 1 of this year, we found that two of the three large insurance providers we work with will no longer sell individual policies because the pre-existing condition clause was lifted. The third provider will only pay Medicare rates, rates inconsistent with high-quality addiction treatment. This means that it is getting more difficult for regular individuals who are not covered by group policies to access quality addiction treatment. When changes are made to group policies under the ACA in January 2015, the problem of accessing quality addiction treatment will become worse.
The result of this trend will be that only the wealthy will be able to afford the finest treatment for loved ones suffering from drug or alcohol addiction. The middle-class guy who worked for the great company that valued its employees and wanted them to have top-notch medical insurance will no longer have access to top-notch care, nor will the vast majority of the self-employed. Instead of developing parity of treatment for mental illness and addiction recovery, I believe the ACA will make the type of care that actually helps people overcome addiction fully, entirely out of reach for the vast majority of people who need the support.
While the future of addiction treatment might be low-cost, the problem is that it is also low-quality. Very few people who use the types of treatment protocols that insurance will now pay for recover. Soon, “treatment” will consist of little more than AA meetings and a 30-day stint in a sober-living (half-way) house. The tragedy is that we have a treatment model that produces seven times better results than 12-step programs and have a large alumnae pool of people who have completely transformed their lives. Insurance companies don’t care about that. They care about making money.
But there is hope for you and your loved ones, even in this situation.
Cliffside Malibu remains committed to treating all sorts of people, at our facility or elsewhere. We are dialed in not only to the highest quality evidence-based treatment available, but also to low cost treatment centers that continue to provide the best quality service they can, despite the difficulty receiving payment from insurers. We will do everything within our power to help you find the best quality care you can afford, whether it is with us or not.
Insurance companies are designed to vex, annoy and confuse you. We take that confusion away. Let us deal with the frustration for you. At no cost or obligation, we will call your insurance company to find out exactly what your insurance benefits are for addiction recovery and provide that information to you in a clear, understandable way. We have full-time staff that does only that, work with insurance companies to clarify benefits. If your insurance does not cover Cliffside, we’ll make referrals. We are never too busy to help you. No matter what. 24 hours a day. I want you to recover and have committed my company to helping you, in any way we can.
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