SXSW Doc ‘Shuffle’ Reveals How Rehab Facilties Prey on Addicts for the Sake of Profit

variety.com:

Addie Morfoot Contributor Benjamin Flaherty spent three years shooting “Shuffle,” a documentary that follows three addicts who are trying to stay alive in rehab facilities that are scamming insurance companies.

Flaherty reveals that patients are being bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a cycle of care designed to keep them sick.

With the help of an FBI informant, an insurance analyst, and the former executive director of a Philadelphia-based treatment facility, the director uncovers collusion at the highest levels of government.

Flaherty, who uses his personal journey of recovery from addiction as a way into the 82-minute doc, unravels a web of public policy and private interest preying on a desperate population for the sake of profit. “I was only a few months sober when I heard a story about people being lured into sober homes for their insurance policies,” he says. “I was living in a sober home at the time, and I couldn’t get my head around the fact that the same type of care that was saving my life was killing other people.