SXSW Doc ‘Shuffle’ Reveals How Rehab Facilties Prey on Addicts

Benjamin Flaherty spent three years shooting “Shuffle,” a documentary that follows three addicts who are trying to stay alive in rehab facilities that are scamming insurance companies. Flaherty reveals that patients are being bought and sold for their insurance policies and ushered into a cycle of care designed to keep them sick. With the help of an FBI informant, an insurance analyst, and the former executive director of a Philadelphia-based treatment facility, the director uncovers collusion at the highest levels of government.

Flaherty, who uses his personal journey of recovery from addiction as a way into the 82-minute doc, unravels a web of public policy and private interest preying on a desperate population for the sake of profit.

“I was only a few months sober when I heard a story about people being lured into sober homes for their insurance policies,” he says. “I was living in a sober home at the time, and I couldn’t get my head around the fact that the same type of care that was saving my life was killing other people. So, I went to see for myself.”

Flaherty produced the doc with Carra Greenberg, Harris Fishman and Scott Paskoff.

Variety spoke with Flaherty about “Shuffle” ahead of the film’s SXSW screening on Wednesday.

Was there any concern about your sobriety when taking on this project, especially because you were living in a sober home at the time?

Flaherty: Probably not as much as there should have been. Watching other people get better was a beautiful part of my own experience in treatment and a huge inspiration behind this film. I wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be to watch people stay sick. I went to a meeting every day during production, no matter where I was. I had to stay grounded, and that’s the only way I know how: go sit in a room with other people who struggle with the same things as me and talk about it.

Was it challenging to find people who were trying to…