Nick Reiner: The $42 Billion Industry That Profits From Relapse | Why Treatment Never Changes
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
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Summary
After the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner — allegedly at the hands of their son Nick — one question haunts every family dealing with addiction: why hasn't treatment gotten better? Fifty years of data showing 40-90% failure rates. An overdose crisis killing over 100,000 Americans annually. And yet the fundamental approach hasn't changed since insurance companies designed the 28-day model in the 1970s. On True Crime Today, we're following the money to find out why.
Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott returns for Part 2 of our examination of America's broken treatment system. The industry is worth $42 billion. Every relapse is another admission, another billing cycle. Facilities get paid whether treatment works or not. There's no standardized outcome tracking, no required reporting of success rates, no transparency for families trying to make informed decisions. Insurance companies control treatment length through utilization review, overriding clinical judgment to prioritize cost containment.
We examine who blocks reform — treatment industry lobbyists, insurance companies, pharmaceutical interests. The research showing what works exists and has for years: longer treatment, integrated mental health care, medication-assisted treatment. So what prevents evidence-based care from becoming standard? Is this regulatory capture, with the industry shaping rules to protect itself? Or is the system simply too entrenched to change? A critical examination of why profit keeps trumping outcomes.
#NickReiner #RobReiner #MicheleReiner #AddictionProfits #TreatmentIndustry #ShavaunScott #RehabReform #InsuranceControl #OpioidCrisis #TrueCrimeToday
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruske, Stacey Cole, and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:08.6 | The Reiner family had resources, access, the ability to pay for the best treatment money could buy, and we're still here. |
| 0:16.4 | With Rob and Michelle Reiner dead and their son charged for the murder. |
| 0:20.1 | So here's what we're going to |
| 0:21.7 | keep talking about. If money and access couldn't fix this, what actually could? And why after |
| 0:27.7 | decades of dismal outcomes after countless families destroyed after an overdose crisis that |
| 0:33.1 | kills over 100,000 Americans a year has nothing fundamentally changed and how we actually treat |
| 0:38.8 | addiction. |
| 0:40.4 | Is it that we don't know how to fix it or that someone doesn't want it fixed? |
| 0:46.8 | Chavon Scott is with us to continue this conversation. |
| 0:50.9 | The 28-day model, it's been standard since the 1970s and 80s. The relapse rate |
| 0:55.6 | have stayed roughly the same. The approach hasn't fundamentally evolved in almost every other |
| 1:02.0 | area of medicine, 50 years of data showing 40 to 90 percent failure rates. That would have triggered |
| 1:07.9 | like a complete overhaul. It obviously has not happened here. |
| 1:12.1 | You were just saying, Chavon, these programs, there's no magic wand to be waived here. |
| 1:18.6 | And the public to think that some sort of magic wand is going to transform a person who doesn't want to be transformed. |
| 1:26.2 | It doesn't exist. It's not going to happen. And is that something, |
| 1:32.6 | is this a conversation that we need to be having as a society if we're going to be intellectually |
| 1:37.2 | honest with ourselves about the treatment industry? Because it seems we don't want to come up |
| 1:43.5 | with any sort of answer for any of this. |
| 1:45.5 | And we just keep hitting our heads against the wall and keep checking the boxes. |
| 1:49.1 | The person doesn't want to be transferred. |
... |
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