A Place for Us

* Your article “Insurers Are Fed Up With Diet Program” (April 10) is filled with misleading statements and allegations. The headline alone states that A Place for Us is a diet program. You ran a copy of our ad. I think you can clearly see that it states “Treatment for depression, not weight loss.”

It’s not about the diagnosis of weight loss as depression, this is about money so the insurance companies “can have it their way” and not pay on legitimate claims. This is a smear campaign that Blue Cross used to destroy a dynamic program where the healing process was more than traditional psychiatric treatment.

All patients admitted to the hospital first had a referral letter from their personal physician stating the need for inpatient hospitalization. Also, a patient is again diagnosed prior to admission by an attending hospital-credentialed physician who was not affiliated with A Place for Us. I didn’t know these psychiatrists; why would they lie? A Place for Us had a management agreement with the hospitals only. As for allegations of enlisting doctors and hospital staff to change diagnoses and medical records, do you really believe that doctors, nurses, psychologists, etc., are going to put their licenses on the line for me?

The law renders me defenseless against trumped-up allegations by the insurance companies, since anything said in a pending lawsuit is protected. I get chewed up emotionally and starved financially with attorney fees standing on the truth. So in the long run, it’s whoever has the most money wins.

I’ll be helping people until the day I die, no matter what the media choose to digest.

JANET GREESON

President, A Place for Us

Orlando, Fla.