How the GOP healthcare plan would worsen the opioid crisis
March 15, 2017
A drug epidemic is ravaging the United States, and it’s getting worse, not better. More than 52,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2015, more than died from automobile accidents or firearms. That’s far more than died from overdoses in any year during the crack epidemic of the 1980s.
- in Maryland ...opioid deaths jumped 62% in the first three quarters of 2016
- you wouldn’t know that from the American Health Care Act of 2017, the House Republican proposal to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a smaller, cheaper health insurance program.
- it would make the problem worse by making dramatic cuts in Medicaid, the healthcare program that covers low-income people.
- House bill would cut Medicaid funding by an estimated 25%, or $880 billion over 10 years – the largest cost saving in the bill.
- House bill also includes a provision allowing states to drop mental health and addition services from their Medicaid plans. (Obamacare required those services to be included.)
- individual states may find themselves choosing whose Medicaid to fund: mothers and children, elderly nursing home residents, or drug users.
- a Medicaid cut that large, Baltimore health commissioner Leana Wen told me, “could cost the lives of thousands of people. It’s medically irresponsible. And it’s fiscally irresponsible; it will create costs down the road.”
- only about 1 in 10 drug abusers currently get addiction treatment ... wouldn’t accept providing insulin to 1 in 10 diabetics, or making chemotherapy available to only 1 in 10 cancer patients.
- governors rely on Medicaid for treating addiction treatment.
- Ohio had more opioid deaths than any other in 2015 ... an estimated 151,000 Ohioans are getting drug or mental health treatment under Medicaid.
- during the 2016 campaign, Trump criticized the Obama administration for failing to stop the drug epidemic, and promised that he would fix it. At a rally in New Hampshire,
Trump promised “a plan to end the opioid epidemic,” and released a statement saying he would incentivize state and local governments to mandate drug treatment.
- in his formal speech to Congress last month,
Trump renewed the pledge. “We will expand treatment for those who have become so badly addicted,” he said, without offering any details.
- House bill goes in the opposite direction; it would cut drug treatment, not expand it. Of all Trump’s promises, this might be the cruelest to break.
https://thehillnews.net/news/How-the-GOP-heathcare-plan-would-worsen-the-opioid-crisis
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