Psychedelic Therapy Abuse: Are Grossbard and Bourzat Committing Systematic Insurance Fraud?

After a series of media reports detailed more than two decades of abuse allegations against psychedelic therapists Aharon Grossbard and Francoise Bourzat, many other students and clients of Grossbard and Bourzat, as well as students at the Hakomi Institute, wrote me with their own stories. A picture emerged from all these corroborating accounts: two of the most significant international trainers in the rapidly growing field of psychedelic therapy (as well as colleagues who kept secrets for them such as Manuela Mischke-Reeds and the Hakomi Institute), felt entitled to systematically abuse their power, disparaging any challengers as acting out or mentally unstable and enabled by an underground “community” of adoring followers. And worse, their students were learning to repeat the pattern and mistreat their own clients under Grossbard and Bourzat’s tutelage and protection — including favored protege of Grossbard and Bourzat Eyal Goren, who recently surrendered his license when facing abuse allegations filed with the licensing board.

Grossbard and Bourzat’s authoritarian entitlement, if that is the best way to express it, also appears to have extended to believing they were right to wield power over life and death: I wrote about the disturbing evidence they have “helped people to die” in a recent update to my previous essays.

And it also looks like there is even more misconduct Grossbard and Bourzat believe they are entitled to engage in: insurance fraud. Here is what I’ve learned:

I was contacted by a person who said they were a client of Bourzat, and they asked to do a zoom video call with me. On the call this person screen shared several documents. One email showed Bourzat responding that she would provide a session to treat the client’s mental health condition. The next email showed Bourzat and the client agreeing on the date for an office session, and the following email indicated that the session had taken place.

And this is where the possible insurance fraud comes in. The person then showed me another document, the bill submitted to the insurance company for reimbursement for psychotherapy. Except that the bill stated that the treatment was with Grossbard, not Bourzat. The dates all matched.

Apparently these documents were a paper trail corroborating the person’s account: that they had been a client of Bourzat, and their insurance company was billed for sessions with Grossbard instead.

Billing for services provided by someone else in this way is insurance fraud, illegal under California Penal Code 550(a) and subject to felony charges and jail time.

So why would Bourzat and Grossbard do this?

Grossbard is a California LMFT, licensed marriage and family therapist; Bourzat is not. Grossbard’s license meets the legal qualification to bill for fee reimbursement under insurance policies; Bourzat has no license, and doesn’t meet these legal qualifications for reimbursement. (Bourzat has an MA degree, and her Hakomi certification was revoked years ago for violating the ethics rule against sex with clients). Hence there is a direct financial incentive to have a license: insurance companies will pay you.

So the documentation presented to me by this person appeared to show that Grossbard and Bourzat felt entitled to get around Bourzat’s lack of license qualification for legal insurance company reimbursement by simply ignoring the law: they appear to have just fabricated documents to claim falsely it was Grossbard, not Bourzat, who did the sessions.

The person also told me that Bourzat and Grossbard arranged all this casually, as if it was a familiar practice, and that they got the impression this billing fraud was going on with many other clients.

That it was done openly, with the client told about it, appears to be another of the many toxic secrets — such as sex with clients, the death of Grossbard’s mother, or clients who were called a “failure” — that Grossbard and Bourzat gave their clients to hold, a bond of forced intimacy also found in families that protect incest and abuse.

And learning about this possible insurance fraud helped me to understand something more. It might help explain another reason why Grossbard and Bourzat haven’t followed through on their repeated threats to sue me for defamation. Even given that everything I wrote is true, they could still sue me, hoping that them being rich and me not being rich means, as it does so often in the legal system, that they could drain me of my ability to defend myself through expensive lawyer fees, and win by default in a war of legal attrition. But would they do that if it means risking a transparent court proceeding discovery process that could bring extensive insurance fraud, and possibly more misconduct, to light? And are Mischke-Reeds and the Hakomi Institute, who also threatened to sue me but haven’t followed through, making a similar calculation?

So this new information may provide additional legal protection for people speaking out, after I was the first to stand up to legal bullying and risk naming Grossbard and Bourzat publicly. Will more survivors now feel safe enough to tell their stories and take action? Or will the the veil of silence around Grossbard and Bourzat, which descended in the psychedelic therapy industry since abuse allegations became public, continue to serve as a warning message to keep quiet, and continue to protect psychedelic therapy abuse — as it has since the early days of LSD research?