Rehabs Are Targeting and Trapping Opioid Users
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 27 February 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's show, we hear the results of a nine-month investigation into how rehab recruiters are luring recovering opioid users into a deadly cycle. Mother Jones reporter Julia Lurie tells host Jamilah King about how some users are being wooed aggressively by rehabs and freelance “patient brokers” in an effort to fill beds and collect insurance money. These brokers scour social media and Narcotics Anonymous meetings for new customers. We get a glimpse into a broken system that’s harming, and sometimes killing, the very people it’s supposed to help, while lining the pockets of facility owners and their corporate bosses. It’s a growing business—and business is booming.
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| 0:00.0 | This is the Mother Jones Podcast. |
| 0:02.0 | I'm Jamila King in New York. |
| 0:04.0 | On today's show, |
| 0:08.0 | on today's show, cash, drugs, and desperation. What could possibly go wrong? |
| 0:18.9 | You can make between a thousand and twelve thousand dollars for getting someone into rehab. |
| 0:24.2 | We dig deep into the big business of drug rehab in this new nine month long mother Jones investigation |
| 0:31.5 | out today. And you know maybe after the first or second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth or |
| 0:36.6 | seventh or eighth death they would think well boy I'm not really doing good anymore |
| 0:41.2 | how patients are becoming pawn ponds in a cash soaked cross-country scheme |
| 0:46.1 | to extract exorbitant insurance payments while providing questionable care. |
| 0:50.8 | When so many people are dying, how is that doing good? |
| 0:55.0 | A broken system harming and sometimes killing the very people it's supposed to help. |
| 1:01.0 | Anybody involved in this, you know, needs to be held accountable, but they're not. |
| 1:06.0 | It's a growing business, and right now, business is good. |
| 1:21.0 | Right here at Mother Jones, we have what we think is the country's leading is the country's leading journalists on America's drug crisis, |
| 1:24.2 | Julia Lorry, and she's here talking about her latest investigation, |
| 1:28.9 | about a new and disturbing phase |
| 1:31.0 | in America's opioid crisis, how drug rehab clinics are exploiting the |
| 1:35.7 | system and sacrificing care for the most desperate. |
| 1:40.9 | Julia, your story is out now in the magazine and online. In it, you explain the |
| 1:49.0 | vicious rehab cycle that involves everyone from drug users to their parents to predatory |
| 1:54.3 | marketers to private insurance companies so break it down for us how does this all |
... |
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