Drug and Alcohol Rehab Blog

Finding Middle Ground for Drug Rehab Coverage

July 30, 2007 on 4:19 pm | In Uncategorized |

Substance abuse and mental health advocates have been trying for many years to have equal insurance coverage for these problems.  The major difficulty is that most Americans thankfully don’t believe that drug addiction is a disease.  Trying to connect it with heart disease or diabetes is a completely fraudulent claim. 

Yes, it would be great for insurance to pay more for drug and alcohol rehab programs, but not endless coverage.  And, we like to keep it separate from other mental health issues, because they are a whole different beast and money-making scheme. 

Insurance should pay for rehab, but only a few times and only those that work.  There should be a national outcomes monitoring program and instead of in-network and out-of-network benefits, there should be “works” and “doesn’t work” benefits.  In other words, the insurance would pay more for a a program that has demonstrated that it can actually help people become drug and alcohol-free, not claim it’s an incurable disease and that relapse is probable.  That’s a bunch of bs.

It’s true, insurance sucks, and the concept and companies are equally responsible for the decline of our nation’s health care as well as rising costs, but in this case, let’s throw ourselves a bone and try to hold drug rehab centers accountable for their actions too.