Headline news may not be reporting it, but an addiction crisis has turned into a pandemic all of its own, as deaths from drug overdoses surge during the COVID pandemic. Not only that, but as NPR reports, the cost of rehab is soaring too.
What’s most concerning is that even though the Affordable Care Act mandates that private insurance pay for rehabilitation programs, the programs themselves have turned that mandate into a “gold rush” of sorts to rake in the money while failing to offer some of the most basic addiction services.
What’s happening, NPR says, is that instead of residential rehab centers helping patients overcome their addiction with medical staff and evidence-based care medications such as buprenorphine and methadone, they’re operating more like a luxury spa — and at very high costs. One such program cost $60,000 a month.
"We actually found less than a third of the programs offered medication maintenance treatment, which is the gold standard of treatment," Tamara Beetham, who conducted the study, told NPR. Not only that, but the study also found that despite the need for physician involvement in addiction treatment, many physicians are either unwilling to treat addicts, or lack the training for doing so.
SOURCE: NPR February 15, 2021