It was recently reported by Craig Anderson in the Delaware State News that Connections Community Support Programs, a nonprofit organization that helps Delaware addicts step toward recovery, “received more than $4.5 million in reimbursements it was not entitled to during a four-year-plus span, a federal attorney alleged in a complaint earlier this month” (“DOJ: Connections accepted improper reimbursements,” April 20). Although the reporting may seem enlightening or may suggest that the opioid epidemic can be a direct result of Connections mishandling of the funds, what the article doesn’t address is why this reporting can lead to a further collapse in Delaware’s limited interest in helping the crisis.
I did everything I could to get a relative to quit heroin, but our family lost him to an overdose. I was able to kick an addiction myself, only because I was trying to get out of the heroin game and get into graduate school for English. Although I continued shooting heroin after my two stints in rehab, the messages from Dover Behavioral Health System saved my life, just as Connections saved two other relatives from their use.
If Connections and other places that inspire recovery within Delaware save lives, we have to ask: Why did Connections mismanage money? If they understand the weight of the decisions they make, then the probable answer is they are aiding the opioid crisis. U.S. Attorney David C. Weiss suggests this: “We expect all providers to submit claims that are true, accurate and complete, and entrust that they will do so. Connections violated that trust and, in the process, defrauded Medicare and Medicaid out of more than $4.5 million.”
There’s firsthand experience that the Department of Justice and the U.S. attorney don’t get about addiction: Besides feeling the absence on birthdays and holidays, the fragments of my relatives cling together every International Overdose Awareness Day — our old life always says hello each Aug. 31. The last time I overdosed, it was just like a dream; I went to sleep. And that’s what America has placed its youth into — should I score $5 and be all right or should I kill myself to live? It’s really easy, but the consequences are what we don’t examine. We forget about the missing people in our lives on those special days. No one wants to talk about how they’re not there anymore, while it seems every time you look up, someone has a tear in their eye like you do — it’s the weight, and heroin has mainlined Delaware in the neck. Just like we used to do.
But what neither the U.S. attorney nor the article elaborates on is why Connections would need the $4.5 million? Because Delaware business and its Wilmington politics don’t understand that we need to save lives before we fill your pockets. And that allegation of an “extra” $4.5 million? They treat the opioid crisis throughout Delaware — and we are in the middle of one.
It could be your child — do you forget?
Jordan McClements
Felton
