Non-existent Illnesses
One diagnosis used to hospitalize Canadians was “codependency.” But as the Toronto Star reported in 1991, the Ontario health ministry “...has no classification for codependency treatment and was surprised to learn that OHIP is paying for it.” Indeed, an examination of medical reference texts offered no insight into anything characterized as “codependency,” strongly suggesting that this “disorder” is pure fiction. Clinical psychologist Stan Katz, who was quoted in the article, put it somewhat more bluntly: “At best, dependency is a nutty idea, at worst a major scam that no one should pay for.” The fact that no such “mental illness” exists did not stop the psychiatric facilities involved in the fraud. Billings were laundered under other diagnostic categories acceptable to the insurers, such as “depression.” One hospital chain even had a memo that listed those diagnoses that health insurance companies would pay for, and which diagnoses were “more difficult to push through.” Another scam involved the use of “dual diagnoses.” This device was used to get around the 28-day limit that OHIP and other insurers imposed. The patient would be diagnosed with one “illness” and then flipped to another one when the 28 day period expired. In his book Bedlam: Greed, Profiteering and Fraud in a Mental Health System Gone Crazy, Joe Sharkey wrote of psychiatric hospitals that had entire units based on this concept: “At Fair Oaks Hospital, the NME [National Medical Enterprises] facility near Palm Beach, Florida, Canadian heroin addicts made up the majority of patients in the dual diagnosis unit, where treatment was based on a primary diagnosis, such as addiction, and a secondary one, such as adjustment disorder. In late 1991, a month after the province of Ontario sharply curtailed payments for treatment in U.S. psychiatric hospitals, the occupancy rate at the hospital dropped by half.”
The $400 Million Swindle continued...
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