The fast-cut trailer to the new movie “Body Brokers” is a dizzying and seductive collage of guns, cash, addiction and prostitutes, punctuated by a nicely dressed man holding a finger to his pursed lips as he says: “Shhhh.”
“Body Brokers” then drops the curtain on what it says is an open secret in the nation’s rehab industry, where drug addicts are reduced to commodities that can be recruited and recycled for big profits, and then kicked to the curb when their insurance runs out. It is a scenario also explored by the Southern California News Group’s 2017 project, “Rehab Riviera.”
Related: Actress Melissa Leo talks ‘Body Brokers’
The movie is not a documentary but it is labeled as being based on actual events.
However, this month, the rehab industry issued a strongly worded letter to the film’s producer and the media, demanding the film carry a different label: “fiction.”
Though they’ve only seen the trailer, the letter, signed by behavioral health and addiction rehab experts from throughout California, say the movie is sensational, irresponsible and likely to scare off addicts who need the services offered by legitimate treatment centers.
The tug-of-war over the independent, low-budget film comes as a handful of California lawmakers step up their war against rogue substance abuse clinics. Two Orange County legislators this year proposed or renewed bills that would force licensed treatment centers to carry insurance coverage and outlaw false advertising — regulations that would be new in the largely unregulated industry.
In her legislative pitch to raise standards in the rehab industry by requiring operators to carry insurance coverage, Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie-Norris, D-Laguna Beach, decried that “fraudsters and scammers” were amok in California’s addiction industry.
And that is the world of director John Swab’s “Body Brokers.”
Swab says he was a street junky for more than a decade, bouncing from detox to detox all over the nation. He says he was brokered — meaning he and his insurance were sold by a third party to a rehab operator — and that he then learned to broker other addicts as part of a multi-billion dollar insurance scam.
Yet, according to the letter from behavioral health experts, Swab’s depiction of that world is wildly exaggerated.
Officials overseeing public addiction treatment programs – which operate in a separate universe from private programs – blasted the filmmaker for “a highly inaccurate” depiction of substance use disorder treatment as driven by greed rather than care.”
Veronica Kelley, director of the San Bernardino County Department of Behavioral Health and president of the County Behavioral Health Directors Association of California, which represents every county in the state, was among those who signed the letter. She said the film doesn’t spell out what she views as stark differences between higher-quality publicly-run programs and commercial, privately-run programs, where anything often goes.
“In the public system, because we’re dealing with taxpayer money, there’s a higher level of accountability,” Kelley said. Public programs, she noted, must not only be licensed by the state and certified by professional organizations, but they’re audited annually by state and federal officials.
She knows both sides. A close relative, she said, sought addiction treatment through the private, commercial system and got caught up in a brokering scenario similar to the transactions depicted in the film.
“What we’re saying in our letter is, this is just one side. People don’t know the difference between the commercial and the public systems. This represents a part of the system that needs to be revamped, absolutely,” Kelley said. “We would love for the commercial side to look more like ours. But the film is generalizing to say that all substance use disorder treatment is predatory.”
Those who want help through the public system can call 800-968-2636, she said.
Kelley’s description, however, is more tempered than the group’s letter, which said the “irresponsible” focus of the movie could very well cost lives.
Swab said those critics had no right to attack his version of his own life.
“We’re flattered people are talking about it,” Swab said. “But this is my truth. I went through this.”
Producer Jeremy Rosen said it would be worse to look the other way.
“It is wildly reckless to ignore this is happening,” Rosen said, although he conceded, “It’s a film, not a documentary. There is some poetic license.”
There have, in fact, been numerous legislative changes to addiction treatment in California in the wake of Southern California News Group’s “Rehab Riviera,” but they were hardly sweeping. Lawmakers acknowledge that the changes they’ve made, so far, have only nibbled at a much greater problem.
Assemblywoman Petrie-Norris says licensed treatment centers and those funded by the government should carry insurance coverage in case patients become prey. But most legislators are reticent to jump into the frey.
“California regulates anything that moves,” Petrie-Norris said. “But for some reason … it’s been open season for scammers and fraudsters.”
Petrie-Norris has joined forces with state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara to push AB 1158, which would require licensed treatment centers and other clinics that receive government funding to maintain a minimum amount of insurance coverage. Standards of treatment and consumer protections would then be set to qualify for that insurance.
What Lara brings is a statewide enforcement staff of 300 people, enough manpower to enforce basic health rules in the industry — something that currently isn’t part of the state regulatory system.
“There is (now) a total lack of regulation and oversight in this space and people are dying as a result,” Petrie-Norris said.
Another strike at “bad actors” in the rehab world comes from Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, who reintroduced Senate Bill 434, which would essentially forbid treatment programs from lying.
Hailed by activists as a long-overdue, common-sense measure, Bates’ bill would prohibit false advertising and marketing about such basics as where a center is located – “at the beach” can mean 15 miles away – and as vital as what services are offered.
Bate’s bill is called Brandon’s Law, after Brandon Nelson. Nelson’s parents were told he was going to a state-of-the-art mental health care program where he’d be closely monitored by a licensed therapist and a psychiatrist. In reality, Nelson wound up in an unlicensed, unregulated “sober living home mental health facility” in San Clemente, where he had a psychotic break and hung himself in 2018.
This is Bates’ third attempt to get the bill enacted. Still, Brandon’s father, Allen, of Santa Monica, remains hopeful.
“It’s obviously disappointing that it wasn’t signed the first time, but we’re certainly in for the long haul,” he said.
The proposal would authorize the California Department of Health Care Services to investigate allegations of misconduct at rehab centers and impose sanctions when warranted.
“If this is passed and enforced, it will bring meaningful change for the consumer,” said David Skonezny, founder of “It’s Time for Ethics in Addiction Treatment,” a private Facebook group of more than 5,600 treatment professionals seeking to raise the bar.
“This is one of the areas where the profession has done a great disservice to the public by misrepresenting itself in ways great and small.”
Skonezny, a substance abuse counselor, has been in the business for years. He said he was prepared to hate the “Body Brokers” movie, but he didn’t.
“The movie is a really accurate look at what happens in the for-profit, privately-funded programs that are lacking in integrity,” he said. “This janky guy running this call center, picking up addicts off the street; a girl turning tricks in a motel to pay for dope for her and her boyfriend, people getting paid off all around – yep. That’s what it looks like.”
Bates agrees. She has been working on the issue for years, and is hopeful the film might finally bring the reality home to her fellow lawmakers, who have been sluggish to act. She’s hoping to organize a screening in Sacramento just for legislators.
“The man who wrote the story lived it,” she said. “It’s hardly fiction.”