Did Acadia Healthcare Get Any Of BHL’s Opioid Slush Funds? I’m askin’, because:
The for-profit chain of 165 methadone clinics — the country’s largest — has generated more than $1.3 billion in revenue since 2022. It is “a business that we continue to feel great about,” Acadia’s chief executive told investors this year.
Methadone is a narcotic, and the clinics are heavily regulated by federal and state governments. In addition to handing out methadone, the clinics are required to provide counseling and other services, like drug testing.
But Acadia often fails to provide that counseling, according to five dozen current and former employees in 22 of the 33 states where the company has clinics. Instead, employees at times falsify the medical records that Acadia uses to bill insurers, according to the employees and internal emails.
Acadia’s business is built on volume. Its counselors carry caseloads that are sometimes more than double the limit set by state regulators, according to employees and inspection records. With so many patients, the clinics can become assembly lines, offering little more than a cup of methadone.
An example:
Brian Pagano, a counselor at an Acadia clinic in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., said he quit in August after his supervisors chided him for spending too much time with patients, including one who was hallucinating. “I was told this is not a mental health clinic, this is a methadone clinic,” he said.
You get the picture:
Clinic directors can get bonuses when their patient enrollment goes up, an incentive that has led Acadia to treat people who do not have opioid addictions but are dependent on other drugs, according to current and former executives and employees. People who are not addicted to opioids can get high from methadone.
While reading this, I had to remind myself that this excellent investigative piece was from the NYTimes, not Pr0Publica. Struck me as weird, but it’s the new normal.
This Mass Deportation Of Immigrants Is Gonna Be A Clusterbleep:
Nearly half of the 1.4 million people in the U.S. immigration system who have pending deportation orders cannot be sent back to their home countries, according to internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, posing one of several looming obstacles to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge for a mass removal campaign.
An array of other logistical and legal impediments also could constrain mass deportations, according to current and former ICE officials.
Musk And The Swami Propose Cuts To Veterans’ Medical Spending. This will, um, not go over well:
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal this week, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who President-elect Donald Trump tapped to lead the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency,” confirmed that they plan to target “unauthorized” federal spending, a category that includes the VA’s medical services.”
DOGE will help end federal overspending by taking aim at the $500 billion-plus in annual federal expenditures that are unauthorized by Congress or being used in ways that Congress never intended,” they wrote, specifically citing funding for nonprofit grants and PBS.
The pair did not specifically call out the VA. But the type of spending they’re taking issue with includes about $120 billion for the VA’s medical services, according to a report issued earlier this year from the Congressional Budget Office.
Later in the hearing, subcommittee Chairman John Carter, R-Texas, assured that he’s “not going to be standing for anybody trying to abolish anything to do with our Veterans Administration.”
But in their op-ed, Musk and Ramaswamy also said they plan to circumvent Congress. While a 1974 law called the Impoundment Control Act generally requires a president to spend money that Congress appropriates, the pair noted Trump opposes that law. Trump ignoring that law was part of his first impeachment over withholding congressionally approved aid to Ukraine.
“Mr. Trump has previously suggested this statute is unconstitutional,” they wrote, “and we believe the current Supreme Court would likely side with him on this question.”
Kill A CEO–Take The Bus. Yes, of course it’s merely a flimsy excuse to drop in a musical amuse-bouche. But first, the flimsy pretext:
The person suspected of shooting Brian Thompson is believed to have left New York City on a bus following the attack, police told CNN citing surveillance footage.
The masked man was seen exiting Central Park around 77th Street with a bike following the early-morning shooting. He then took a cab to a Port Authority bus center near the George Washington Bridge, police commissioner Jessica Tisch told the network.
“We have video of him entering the Port Authority Bus Terminal. We don’t have any video of him exiting so we believe he may have gotten on a bus,” she said.
The buses that go into and out of the terminal are interstate buses, which is why he’s believed to have left the city, she added.
And, now. Too obvious, I know, but it’s my Open Thread this morning, and I’ll do what I want:
‘Corporations Are People, Too’? We report, you decide:
Silicon Valley poured more than $394.1m into the US presidential election this year, according to a Guardian analysis, the bulk of it coming from an enormous donation of about $243m Elon Musk made to Donald Trump’s campaign.
The analysis of new election data from the US Federal Election Commission (FEC) shows the increasingly heavy influence of the tech industry in US elections. Advocates of cryptocurrency were particularly active in this election as they fought to stave off regulation, pumping money into the presidential campaigns and key congressional races.
The donors came from tech’s biggest companies: Google, WhatsApp, LinkedIn and Netflix. Others were powerful venture capitalists who had made billions from investing in tech.
The FEC filings offer only a glimpse of the millions tech is pouring into Washington as it seeks to influence government and regulators. The accounting of US political giving is complicated and opaque and donors can find ways to give money without it being publicly reported.
The 2010 landmark supreme court case Citizens United v FEC made it much easier for industries and wealthy individuals to contribute to a political campaign, often in ways that are hard to track but that are entirely legal.
The court’s decision gave way to a third, more opaque way of donating: Super Pacs. Corporations and wealthy individuals can give an unlimited amount of cash to a Super Pac. The only caveat is that Super Pacs can’t contribute to a campaign directly – but they can spend all they want to on political advertising for their preferred candidate.
When a true history of democracy’s demise is written, Citizens United will be front and center.
The Sarah McBride Interview. From WHYY. Hmmm, let’s see what the News Journal has cooked up for this morning. The lead story!:
Special Delaware Christmas gifts that folks won’t expect to get.
Let’s see…the News Journal with a news story as the lead story? Not today. In fairness, they did a Day 2 (more like Day 6) follow-up of the Spotlight Delaware story on the police targeting the Friendship House. It’s a good story. But who can deny that special Christmas gifts is the more compelling story of the two?
I’ll see some of you today in the Claymont Holiday Parade. La Somnambula will be joining me.
What do you want to talk about?