EDITORIAL: Opioid treatment for the poor? That could die with Obamacare
There, roughly 1,100 are in treatment and 400 more are waiting to get in. The story is the same all over the
It's almost a dirty little secret -- one that, shamefully, hasn't surfaced in all of the giddy banter of the past week about ways to finally repeal and replace President
Price has talked for years about getting rid of Obamacare, reneging on expanded
House Majority Leader
Rep.
The Affordable Care Act is far from perfect, but it has allowed millions of previously uninsured Americans to receive addiction counseling and prescription detox medication at a reasonable cost. If the plan is to gut Obamacare, what then for the people who desperately need these services?
This is a serious question that needs an answer, particularly from
The demand for inexpensive treatment is certainly there. At the
Today, more than 12 million people are enrolled in
Nationally, some 20 million people have gained coverage under the Affordable Care Act, reducing the nation's uninsured rate to 8.6 percent, the lowest on record. About half of them are poor.
Those living in the 19 states with Republican governors or legislatures that have refused to expand
On this subject -- key to slowing the opioid epidemic, which killed more than 28,000 people in 2014 alone -- President-elect Trump has vacillated between mute and vague. Even on the campaign trail, while
Until October, his tone-deaf solution was to build a wall along the Mexican border to stop the flow of heroin into
Since then, he has expanded his platform to address not only addiction to cheap heroin but the prescription opioids that start so many Americans down the path to illicit drug use and death.
He now says he wants the
He hasn't said how he would do that, though -- just that he wants to do it while eliminating the one innovation that has finally helped the most vulnerable addicts. It's a contradiction that was on full display Thursday night in
In their rush to board the
If there is a ground zero in the opioid epidemic, it is in
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