To the Journal editor:

For the following example the person will have medical insurance that they either pay for or is provided for by their employer.

Someone is poisoned and the cure takes three months but insurance only pays 14 days. If the person does not take the cure they will die.

People poisoned from opioids, cocaine or other drugs face this regularly. Often, insurance companies will pay for no more than 14 days of rehab. Fourteen days is not enough to heal. People are dying and families driven into poverty.

The descriptions in the insurance industry for rehab are sometimes hidden — if they are there at all. Additionally, most rehab clinics are operating strangely. They are needed and necessary. There are no standards, though, and no commonly agreed upon criteria of what one is.

No matter what happens in these places is important, it seems, to insurance companies who have taken the clear stand that no matter what it is it should last more than two weeks.

If we are not going to let people die, then something must be done about the rehab clinics. Addiction and dependence are medical conditions that must be treated by the system that created them not pushed off to hucksters, real estate con artists and charlatans.

It’s bad enough that insurance companies refuse to pay for complete treatments but the fact that they pay anything for what is going on in these places should shock anyone.

What other make-believe cures and remedies are they paying for?

ALFRED BROCK

Wayne, Michigan