On August 22 2010, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and Physicians for Human Rights – Israel achieved a major victory when the Health Ministry announced the cancellation of a tender which would have bestowed the administration of methadone distribution centers for drug addicts in Israel to private companies.. In May 2010, a tender was published and opened to private bidders. The tender was cancelled following ACRI and PHR’s petition against it to the Jerusalem Administrative Court, in addition to a second petition submitted by the Association for Public Health, the organization currently running the distribution centers. Methadone is a drug used in the treatment of drug addiction.
Though the organizations lauded the cancellation as an unprecedented victory for human rights and social justice, but warned that it did not preclude the possibility of drug rehabilitation services being privatized in the future.
The petition, filed on July 28 by the two organizations along with drug addicts who are being treated at methadone distribution centers, included a detailed list of potential harms privatization would have on the centers’ clientele. Among the inadequacies of privatization: it would encourage the winning bidder to limit treatment given that each center operator is paid for the number of clients and not the type of treatment. The petitioners argued that because there is no clear definition of the psychosocial services they should provide, the most inexpensive approach would be to offer drug substitutes with a minimal amount of social support. Ultimately, the privatization of the centers would not require the companies to provide effective and substantive care to the patients – and would not contribute to their recovery.
The petitioners, some of them from personal experience, argued that such a practice would likely turn the centers into a type of “legal drug station”. The appeal further argued that the Ministry of Health’s tender didn’t include supervisory or regulatory mechanisms of the private centers once they are in place. Privatization wouldn’t provide any incentive for the centers to assist the methadone addicts in rehabilitation because they are reimbursed based on the number of patients they treat.
According to ACRI attorney Maskit Bandel who wrote the petition; “Drug addicts constitute one of the weakest and ostracized groups in Israel, and we cannot bestow their well-being to private companies. Past experience has proven that the privatization of such addiction centers, because of profit-seeking considerations and in the absence of public supervision, constitute a catastrophe for addicts treated at the rehabilitation centers.”
As a result of the petitions, the Jerusalem Administrative Court called for a 20-day freeze of the bid. On August 22, the Ministry of Health announced its decision to cancel the proposal completely and stated that a new tender would be announced.
