Samuels is director and president of the New York-based Legal Action Center, an advocacy group for sufferers of AIDS and drug and alcohol abuse. The Minnesota-based Hazelden Foundation, leading a coalition of treatment centers that includes the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., is holding events around the country to recruit its 40,000 alumni for the lobbying effort. The treatment centers are pushing legislation to guarantee equal insurance coverage for treatment of addiction and other medical services. The measure is modeled after a new law intended to achieve parity for mental health services. Employers would not be required to pay for alcohol and drug-abuse treatment they do not already provide, and the bill's backers say any increase in premiums would be negligible, but businesses generally oppose such parity requirements.
People have to take a certain amount of responsibility for their own lives.
Nobody forces them to drink or take drugs. A sharp drop in the number of treatment centers has been blamed on increasing restrictions on insurance coverage brought on by managed health care. Hazelden's effort to organize alcoholics into a vocal force for change runs counter to its own tradition as well as AA's. AA's Tradition Ten says the organization takes no position on any public issue. Alcoholics might not seek help if they knew they would be identified.