The recruiters knew that at a drug treatment facility, with the right insurance policy, they were worth tens of thousands of dollars.
“If you want to change your life around or even if you just want a free-ride vacation to California for three months or whatever, you know, here it is,” one recruiter told Derek Dunn in 2022.
Dunn took the bait.
So did more than 880 other Oklahomans, lured to drug treatment facilities in California and Arizona between 2020 and 2025, insurance company Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma alleged in two federal lawsuits. The company said the scheme cost them $46 million in wrongful payments.
Across the region, patients observed that treatment facilities seemed to target Oklahomans. Russell Andrews attended South Coast Behavioral Health, a facility named in a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma lawsuit, in 2022.
“They had a running joke about calling it the Okla-homie because it was like 90% of us were from Oklahoma,” Andrews said.
Oklahoma Watch spoke to nine former patients who collectively attended at least 12 facilities in Southern California. All but one said the majority of their fellow patients were Oklahomans.
Recruiters set them up with an insurance agent and coached them to lie about their income so it appeared that they made too much to qualify for SoonerCare, Oklahoma’s Medicaid program, the insurer alleged. Instead, the false amount was just enough for the patient to qualify for a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma policy, purchased through the individual marketplace. That policy, the recruiters knew, paid robust rates for out-of-state treatment, according to the complaint.
Once they were insured, recruiters brought plane tickets for the patients and told them their new insurance policy would cover the flights, housing, and inpatient and outpatient treatment, the complaint alleged. When a recruiter successfully delivered a new patient to a treatment facility, they got paid, according to the petition.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma declined to comment for this story. South Coast Behavioral Health, a treatment provider named in the lawsuit, also declined to comment.
In their answers, Asana Recovery and Beachfront Sober Living said the allegations are an attempt by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma to discourage out-of-state providers from treating Oklahoma residents in need of substance use treatment.
Some Facilities Accused of Cutting Corners
Some facilities provided care that helped patients get sober. Jeff Rogers, an Oklahoma man who went to South Coast Behavioral Health in Southern California for addiction treatment in 2022, said treatment was everything he’d hoped for: he had access to counselors, group therapy, and classes that helped him understand the root of his addiction.
“To be completely honest, I feel lucky to have slipped through the cracks and got help in Cali while it was available,” he said.
But other facilities treated patients as cash cows, making hundreds of thousands of dollars while providing little therapeutic treatment, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma claimed.
At one facility, patients logged onto video calls for group therapy, the insurer alleged. Many started the call, then immediately turned their cameras off. Other facilities were “Cali sober,” meaning their patients could openly use marijuana, according to the complaint.
In October, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Oklahoma effectively shut down the scheme. The insurer announced that starting January 1, individual marketplace plans would no longer qualify for care outside the state, except in border counties, according to a statement published by the company.
Without the option of out-of-state care, some Oklahomans can’t receive the treatment they need, said Titus Carey, outreach director at Hope is Alive, a nonprofit that provides recovery services in six states.
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration estimated that in 2022 and 2023, an average of 145,000 Oklahomans received some form of substance abuse treatment each year. Another 499,000 needed treatment but didn’t receive it.
Carey said that some facilities in California were reputable and filled a gap in Oklahoma addiction treatment.
The insurer’s policy change also left some Oklahomans, such as Amber Hundley, scrambling in California. Hundley said the treatment facility she’d lived at for more than a year told her to leave. She was eligible for insurance in California, but needed housing. The facility gave her contact information for another recruiter.
Hundley said the recruiter told her she could get into another program, but that Hundley couldn’t come in clean. They pushed her to relapse, and even sent money to buy alcohol.
“It didn’t take very long until we’d gone out and gotten some other substances,” Hundley said.
Hundley is now sober and working in the recovery industry. Without treatment in California, she said, she wouldn’t have been able to get clean.
“For the majority of people that I know, especially from Oklahoma and from other states as well, being able to attain sobriety wasn’t something that was possible for us at home,” she said.
