Andy Beshear Set Out to Make Drug Treatment Widely Available in Kentucky. Fraud and Abuse Followed.

“It just became an opportunity for people to make money.”

Beshear stripped the Medicaid spending controls in 2020 and Kentucky wrote $2.3 billion in behavioral health checks with nobody reading them. Addiction Recovery Care, the largest provider in the state, settled federal fraud claims for $16 million and then went under. Long-term residential beds statewide fell 56 percent when it closed. The operators kept the money. The patients lost the beds.