When Rehab Might Help An Addict — But Insurance Won’t Cover It

Growing up in the Philadelphia suburb of Warrington, Anthony Fiore checked all the boxes for a typical American guy. He’d go to the gym, play video games and watch football — in his case, the Eagles. His mom, Valerie Fiore, was proud of him.

“Anthony was very intelligent,” she says. “He breezed through his high school, Central Bucks South — he never studied. He aced his SATs. He got right into Penn State’s main campus.”

But before he could get to Penn State, the powerful painkiller Oxycontin got hold of him. Soon afterward, he moved on to heroin.

In May 2011, Anthony tried a 21-day rehabilitation stint in Florida. About a year later, he checked in to another facility, but only for 11 days. By the third attempt at inpatient rehab, Anthony said he really wanted to get help and would stick it out.

“That was a 21-day treatment. And that’s when I had Premera Blue Cross,” Fiore says. She begged the staff at the rehab-center to keep treating her son at their facility for longer than 21 days. “And that gentleman said to me, ‘Your insurance will not cover any more.’ ”

The family couldn’t afford to foot the bill for a longer stay, Valerie Fiore says. So Anthony left that facility in November 2013. Six months later, he was dead of a heroin overdose.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/08/16/430437514/when-rehab-might-help-an-addict-but-insurance-wont-cover-it?utm_campaign=KHN%3A+First+Edition&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=21342701&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8nDHd_K7FhS5cUlWGzPw1oulSmLR0ZOUnhHZGpr8yCR0DjiIiQbeBDhSQ9K185ZYNC24r3-kXjjsWYqaJwWj7Npqh6ew&_hsmi=21342701