Director Benjamin Flaherty is himself a recovering alcoholic. He got help after many years from a sponsor and from working in the program. When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, it covered addiction treatment. Since that time, many bogus treatment centers have sprung up. They are simply patient mills whose object is to milk the system for the most money and to hopefully keep the patient cycling through the system, again and again.
These centers pay big bonuses to agents for new clients’ names. In some cases, the patients become agents, get paid, and when they get clean, are given more big monetary rewards by the treatment centers. What do you think a lot of them do with a lot of free money? If you answered, “Buy drugs,” you would be right. Now, the centers, either have them as a client to start the process all over that one or another one.
Mr. Flaherty and his crew follow David and a couple of others over a period of a few years. Not everyone makes it out alive. This seemingly good idea of treatment for people with an addiction has been at least partly hijacked by people and groups who are criminals. Their rewards are astronomical. From the testing to the labs to the residential stays to the medicines that are prescribed- which are themselves addictive drugs steps of the process can be taken advantage of by these groups.
It’s a billion-dollar business, and the people who need help will not get it if they end up in this shuffle of illicit clinics. The movie ends with a couple of success stories, but they didn’t get clean using the bad clinics. This documentary gives a fascinating look at a subject that most people don’t know about. After watching Shuffle, you’ll feel you have just received an education. I hope to see more of Benjamin Flaherty’s work in the future. He certainly made this subject
a roller coaster ride.