how much $ did our folks spend?

[Anonymous]

Does anyone have an idea of the cost of straight? I mean, how much did our parents spend to keep us there? Was there a monthly fee or a flat fee? I wish I could ask my parents, but Altzhimer's has set in and they don't recall..

[Scarstruck]

I hink it was something like between 10 k and 30 k...and they signed a contract that they paid regardless of your success or failure...per year.

 Plus host home fees....for out of town clients...plus constant fundraising and recruiting.

 A parent told me that ....if there was a city where a family lived and there were no other children from that city in the program...then the family would get confronted and pressured to recruit..to "Help save their communty from the evils of drugs and Judas Priest" or whatever.

[taureana]

I called my mom and asked her about this.  I think we were a special case.  You see, my dad died when I was 16 and my mother was disabled, collecting Social Security.

She said that it was $11,000 for the full program, plus host home fees.  She said that on my intake, she paid them $1200.00 down.  And she said that the host home fees were $100/month.  I was an out of town client, and she told them that the most she could pay for host home fees was $50.00, and if they couldn't accept that, then she wasn't going to put me in the program.

We didn't have insurance either, and so she was supposed to make monthly payments, but she doesn't remember what those payments were.  I would be very surprised if they got more than $5000.00 from my mom.  

I walked when I turned 18.  She kept making payments until I turned 20, then she said that it was my responsibility to start paying.  I threw the bills away.  After like 2 or 3 months we stopped getting bills and that was the last we heard.  They didn't even put it on her credit report that she didn't pay.

[GregFL]

When Art Barker started "curing Kids" he claimed he could Save your child's life for $250 dollars. Back then the Seed had open meeting on Monday and Fridays and the whole place would get feaverish evangelical style, everyone would get worked up and they would pass buckets thru the parents for donations. Many people would drop 50s in there each open meeting and the real clincher was the sheer numbers as there was always hundreds of kids in the program and at least as many sets of parents and guests were not only allowed but encouraged.

Art Barker became wealthy with this little scheme of his and he was critized in the press for being a penecostal style movement. No one knows for sure how much money he got this way. One of the Goals of Straight was to professionalize the seed model. The Seed never insurance billed back in the day nor had professionals on staff.

Last I spoke to Brian Seeber at Safe about a year ago, the fee was around $30 grand to admit your kid.  

A far cry from 1972 and $250 bucks, eh?  Call it progress if you must.....but they still sing those damn seed songs!

 "Picture in your mind a moment, $250 saves one young person from a life of drugs with one of three alternatives-death, imprisonment, or psychiatric hospitalization. What an investment-$250 for one life!

Art Barker's 1973 testimony before a house education subcommittee.



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Bingo the Clowno for presidento..2004



[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2004-06-09 13:31 ]

[ginabobina]

The military Insurance CHAMPUS paid out 15,000 in claims. When I turned 18 I received a certified letter stating I was being sued for the money they paid out in falsefied  claims. My parents got them down to 10,000 and had to repay the insurance company due to the way claims were handled and filed by STRAIGHT