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Off Beat: Health care Catch-22 entangled treatment center for deaf addicts | The Columbian
You don’t have to know anything about drug treatment to recognize the problem that undercut a local therapy center.
It’s called Catch-22.
It has a lot of variations, but this is how it affected the Northwest Deaf Addiction Center: Some people couldn’t come to the center and get help for their drug problem because those people had a drug problem.
Those people also were Canadians, which was the deal-breaker, said Lynn Samuels, chief executive officer of Vancouver-based Lifeline Connections.
“Unfortunately, the number of clients from Canada was significantly reduced as Homeland Security tightened eligibility at the border,” Samuels said.
Her agency closed the Northwest Deaf Addiction Center in Vancouver a week ago because of a shrinking number of patients for the 16-bed center.
“Although clients were coming to the U.S. for health care, there are policies that prohibit individuals from coming into the country who have histories of drug use and drug-related criminal offenses,” she said.
“If someone is trying to access health care, and if the condition they’re dealing with is an addiction, they’re technically not legal,” she said.
“There was a time we probably always had one bed filled with someone from Canada.”
That ended in August 2008, she said. “It was just a wall.”
You don’t have to know anything about drug treatment to recognize the problem that undercut a local therapy center.
It’s called Catch-22.
It has a lot of variations, but this is how it affected the Northwest Deaf Addiction Center: Some people couldn’t come to the center and get help for their drug problem because those people had a drug problem.
Those people also were Canadians, which was the deal-breaker, said Lynn Samuels, chief executive officer of Vancouver-based Lifeline Connections.
“Unfortunately, the number of clients from Canada was significantly reduced as Homeland Security tightened eligibility at the border,” Samuels said.
Her agency closed the Northwest Deaf Addiction Center in Vancouver a week ago because of a shrinking number of patients for the 16-bed center.
“Although clients were coming to the U.S. for health care, there are policies that prohibit individuals from coming into the country who have histories of drug use and drug-related criminal offenses,” she said.
“If someone is trying to access health care, and if the condition they’re dealing with is an addiction, they’re technically not legal,” she said.
“There was a time we probably always had one bed filled with someone from Canada.”
That ended in August 2008, she said. “It was just a wall.”