Compensation for victims of the War on Drugs?

DocTim420 said:

Ahem--reality check please:

1. Justice in the "war on drugs" is dependent on one's finances--not the color of one's skin (period).
2. You can not legislate against stupidity. If someone is stupid enough to reduce their entire purpose of life to a "needle and spoon", then why should I compensate them for their stupidity?
3. Past compensation/reparations paid by the US Government are few and far between. The largest one that I recall is the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act (1948) that..."provided compensation to Japanese American citizens removed from the West Coast during World War II (WWII) for losses of real and personal property. Approximately 26,550 claims totaling $142,000 were filed. The program was administered by the Justice Department, which set a $100,000,000 limit on the total claims. Over $36,974,240 was awarded".
4. A person born a certain color/race has no say so in the matter since race/color of skin are things we can not control...but selecting a particular drug to abuse is within the control of the abuser.
5. Me too. If we compensate "this group" of people...then why not "that group"? Such as--should descendants of Caucasian slave owners compensate descendants of Caucasians that did not own slaves?
6. Should reparations be indexed to one's income/net worth? Should the amount paid to Oprah Winfrey or Bill Cosby be the same amount paid to a single mom in Compton?

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DocTim420 said:

LOL...you're about half way there my friend, assuming you will die at 100. I have a little less than 40% left.

If one dies at 100 years old, then each year equates to 1% of one's life.

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DocTim420 said:

LOL, stealing lines from the Bridge over the River Kwai...the horror.

While we are slightly off topic, another age/death thing I use is "grades". Remember in school if you scored 90% or above on a test you earned an A, 80% B, 70% C, 60% D and 59% or below the F.

So...a person makes it 90 years old they get an A...and they flunk if they don't make it to to 60. Of course there is also a thing called "extra credit". Gregg Allman passed at 70 but is awarded 25 extra credits--15 for his music and 10 for surviving the druggy days of the 60s...making his grade a solid A. Now BB King passed at 90 and I think he deserves an A++ so BB is also awarded 15 extra credits for his music.

Kinda makes dying a bit more "fun". LOL. Hey, I am not afraid of dying, I just don't want to...right now.

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"Totally Random Post".

DocTim420 said:

LOL, stealing lines from the Bridge over the River Kwai...the horror.

While we are slightly off topic, another age/death thing I use is "grades". Remember in school if you scored 90% or above on a test you earned an A, 80% B, 70% C, 60% D and 59% or below the F.

So...a person makes it 90 years old they get an A...and they flunk if they don't make it to to 60. Of course there is also a thing called "extra credit". Gregg Allman passed at 70 but is awarded 25 extra credits--15 for his music and 10 for surviving the druggy days of the 60s...making his grade a solid A. Now BB King passed at 90 and I think he deserves an A++ so BB is also awarded 15 extra credits for his music.

Kinda makes dying a bit more "fun". LOL. Hey, I am not afraid of dying, I just don't want to...right now.

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DocTim420 said:

LOL...you're about half way there my friend, assuming you will die at 100. I have a little less than 40% left.

If one dies at 100 years old, then each year equates to 1% of one's life.

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Simple scheme

The scheme at the center of rehab fraud is not new, but two recent developments are making it much worse.

First, the number of people who might need a stint in rehab – drug-dependent men and women like Solomon – is exploding. About 2 million Americans are addicted to prescription opioids, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and at least 1 million more are addicted to heroin and other illegal drugs. And many states, like California, increasingly are diverting drug addicts to treatment programs rather than sending them to prison.

Second, under the rules of Obamacare, insurance companies are required to pay for addiction recovery. And through Covered California, insurance can be purchased the day you arrive from out of state.

With those factors in play, rehab centers use TV and online advertising, telemarketing and third-party recruiters – sometimes called “body brokers” – to convince addicts from around the country to come to Southern California to get clean. If the patient is insured – and many people addicted to prescription opiates are – that’s a plus. But if they’re not, some rehab centers pay for the addict to travel to California and sign up for insurance.

“They tell the kids they’re getting ‘scholarships’ to go into rehab,” said Ashton Abernathy, who worked on the financial side of several Orange County-based rehab centers before starting her own medical billing company.

“They don’t tell them that, half the time, they’re signing them up for insurance.”

Once the addict is insured and in a center – often a house – he or she usually stays for three months or so. During that time, unethical operators run up daily medical bills, covering everything from detox monitoring to psychological counseling, while providing little in the way of effective recovery services. The bills often run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient.

But billing for addiction recovery is just one way rehab operators and people connected to them make money.

Addicts must pass drug tests to show they’re staying sober while in rehab. Often, those tests are ordered up at labs sometimes owned by the owner of the rehab center, a circular bit of business that can turn Solomon’s urine into his most valuable asset, generating insurance bills of more than $1,000 a day in some cases.

Eventually, when the insurance money dries up, the addict is kicked out of the center and onto the streets, a practice so routine there’s a name for it – “curbing.”

In this side of the rehab world, billing fraud is common and documents sometimes are faked. In some centers, and their affiliated (and unlicensed) sober living homes, street drugs are made available to patient-users so they can start the whole expensive process again, according to court documents and state records.

The depth of the problems aren’t well known outside the industry, but they haven’t gone unnoticed.

Insurance companies, state and federal regulators, and police agencies as diverse as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the Los Angeles County Sheriff are investigating or suing some of the rehab industry’s bigger players. This month, a single rehab operator – Christopher Bathum, a convicted felon who controlled centers in Los Angeles and Orange counties – was ordered to stand trial for insurance fraud alleged to be worth more than $176 million. Separately, he faces charges of sexual assault allegedly involving his female patients.

On another front, Democrat and Republican legislators are pushing for new state and federal regulations. And, in some cases, consumers and neighborhood groups and city councils are fighting back. Costa Mesa recently passed an ordinance calling for sober living homes to send patients back to the address they had before entering treatment, a move aimed at preventing homelessness.

Still, rehab beds never are empty long.

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