The following article discusses the difficulties for individuals to afford long term drug rehab especially since insurance companies do not always cover the costs. The types of programs that generally are not covered are non medical programs. While medical treatment is important for recovery, it is also most successful when coupled with learning life skills & a new way of living in a residential setting. Send us any 2008 cost of drug rehab information you have.
Medicaid will pay for some services but not others. Medicaid pays for what’s “medically necessary,” said Jeff Bennett, director of the Gulf Coast Mental Health Center, which serves Hancock, Harrison, Pearl River and Stone counties. If it’s a facility not run by medical professionals, he said, such as charity or faith-based treatment programs, Medicaid may not pay. Many residential programs, he said, are also not covered.
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Sadly the purpose of insurance is to cover medical treatment for medically disagnosed disorders. This is horribly limiting in two ways: one is that non-medical treatments, even though proven successful, are not usually covered. And secondly, preventative efforts, to prevent the onset or at least deter the progression of disease, are not usually covered. The end result? The insurance company ends up paying more when the disease progresses and finally necessitates hospitalization and esoteric treatments.
It is unfortunate that the major players in government and the the health care industry are igonoring the huge costs (human lives and the cost to the health care system) of untreated addiction.
We know that long term treatment works very well for the suffering addict yet it is not covered.
How can this be changed? Clinicians and Executives in the field need to start speaking out on the significant impact untreated addictions has and will have on our country.