There is a
new trend that many Florida treatment centers are practicing that are
disrupting the insurance process of covering treatment. Last week, Cigna, one of the largest
insurance companies participating in the Florida healthcare exchange pulled out
and will no longer be offering individual plans. That equates to 30,000 people tasked with
finding a new insurance company for 2016.
What is
happening is some treatment centers are using urine analysis screens to line
their pockets. What happens is someone
goes to treatment or a sober living house and the facilities themselves are
having their clients submit to drug testing.
Sometimes they require three drug tests per week. They submit those screens to laboratories and
in turn bill the insurance company.
Why would
this be wrong? Patients of treatment
centers and sober living environments should have clean drug screens. There are a few problems with this
practice. First off, there is no need to
drug test people three times per week.
The majority of the narcotics that are tested stay in the body for at
least three days. The second problem is
the cost associated with what these labs charge. When you go into any drug store these days
you can buy a urine analysis test for $50 roughly. Cigna has said that some of the labs that
they are paying are billing upwards of $5000 per test. In particular there was one sober living
facility that was billing $36 thousand per month for one patient. That totals over $400 thousand a year per
person and if you have six people in the facility the final reimbursement is
over $2 million.
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