Austin Recovery in Buda frequently assists low-income, uninsured patients seeking treatment for mental health or drug-related issues.
Scott Lynch works at a treatment center called Austin Recovery. A big part of his job involves helping people get into rehab programs, even if that means sending them to other facilities.
Sometimes that involves making sure people get medical or psychiatric help before entering treatment. But the cost of rehab programs is often the biggest barrier people face. Lynch said a lot of people who turn to Austin Recovery don’t have health insurance.
“The large majority of our population is uninsured,” Lynch said. He estimates that 85 percent of the people who call into Austin Recovery seeking treatment are uninsured. Without insurance, or donations from elsewhere, they will likely have to find a way to pay out-of-pocket for treatment.
Thompson said he found that some facilities almost exclusively take patients that have insurance.
“You are pretty much not going to be able to get in, and that’s where you are getting pretty extensive recovery. I mean like some really good recovery. But if you don’t have insurance you are not going to get in,” Lynch said.
Thompson had made a lot of calls trying to find a way into treatment. He was on a mission to get clean, he said, because he’d been in this place before. He’s been using since he was in high school with periods of sobriety throughout. He’s also had periods of his life where his heroin addiction completely took over. So, when he recently relapsed after 8 months of sobriety, he knew he needed to make this happen.
Thompson said that finally, he was just a few days from getting into rehab. He said he’d talked to a friend who recommended a place that was able to reserve Thompson a spot. But he said the waiting had him on edge.
These wait times aren’t just stressing out people who are seeking help. Lynch said the demand out there is something he deals with all the time.
Austin Recovery is among a small group of treatment centers that works to provide services to mostly low-income people, but they can only do so much. Their in-patient facility, for example, can only take in about 70 people at a time. And with the rising number of people addicted to opiates like painkillers and heroin, the need is only getting bigger. Austin Recovery’s executive director Ivana Grahovac said that Texas needs more programs like hers.
A federal report found that, just in Texas, about 406,000 adults who would qualify for Medicaid under an expanded program are struggling with mental illness or substance use disorder. State lawmakers in Texas are still largely opposed, though, to expanding Medicaid.