Fifth GOPer rips proposal
DRUG ADDICTION experts lambasted the Senate Republicans’ proposed health care bill Friday — calling it a heartless measure that will cost lives amid the nation’s unprecedented opioid epidemic.
“This is like a death sentence for those getting treatment for substance abuse disorders,” said Gary Mendell, founder of Shatterproof, a nonprofit dedicated to combating addiction.
“You could not create a worse scenario.”
Mendell was among a group of addiction experts who addressed the White House special commission on opioids in its first meeting last week.
Their pleas for increased funding and expanded treatment apparently fell on deaf ears among the legislators who crafted the Senate bill rolled out Thursday.
The proposed legislation calls for deep cuts to Medicaid, along with a paltry $2 billion allocation to help fight the opioid epidemic.
Mendell said the gutting of Medicaid would have especially dire consequences for the nearly 3 million Americans who rely on it for substance abuse treatment.
“These are people who are getting medication and are starting to do well,” said Mendell, whose 25-year-old son took his own life after struggling with opioid addiction.
“And we’re going to rip the insurance away from them? Is that who we are as a society? We’re better than this.”
Some 2.6 million Americans are believed to be addicted to prescription painkillers and heroin.
Roughly 33,000 people died of fatal opioid overdoses in 2015 — and the 2016 figure, which is still being compiled, is expected to be far larger.
Dr. Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid research at Brandeis University, said the federal government has already been slow to respond to an epidemic that is showing no signs of abating.
“The investment that we need to be making to tackle this problem is in the tens of billions a year — not $2 billion,” said Kolodny.
“And it’s not even clear that this $2 billion is for the opioid crisis.”
The Medicaid cutbacks would be particularly damaging for some of the states hardest hit by the epidemic.
The Medicaid expansion under Obamacare reportedly accounted for 47% of total Medicaid spending on substance abuse treatment in West Virginia, which had the highest fatal overdose rate in 2015.
In Kentucky, which was ranked third, the expansion accounted for 61% of total Medicaid spending, according to the Associated Press.
Republican senators from Ohio and West Virginia, Rob Portman and Shelley Moore Capito, had asked for the bill to include an increase of $45 billion for opioid treetment over the next 10 years.
“There’s only a small percentage of (opioid users) who are really getting the right treatment,” Kolodny said.
“If many of them lose access to health care coverage, there’s a good chance they will relapse. If they relapse, there’s a good chance they will overdose and die.”
Dr. Mitchell Rosenthal, an addiction expert who also addressed the White House panel on opioids, called the legislation “immoral and mean-spirited.”
“We should be expanding treatment capacity and prevention programs, and you have a Senate that’s proposing evisceration,” said Rosenthal, deputy chairman of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence and the CEO of the Rosenthal Center for Addiction Studies. “It is nuts.” Rosenthal and Mendell said the lack of funds devoted to combating the opioid scourge will likely have a chilling effect on doctors and other potential treatment providers who are sorely needed to help stem the crisis.
“It will affect people who are thinking about opening new programs that are needed, because where is the money going to come from?” Rosenthal said. Friday at Republicans over their proposed health care measure. “Forget death panels. If Republicans pass this bill, they're the death party,” Clinton tweeted. She also shared a study by the Center for American Progress that projects the bill currently in the Senate could result in 18,000 to 28,000 additional deaths in the U.S. by 2026. MORE CRACKS emerged Friday in the Republican effort to overhaul Obamacare, as a fifth GOP senator rejected his chamber’s newly released version of the bill and conservative House members complained they were not likely to support it either.
Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.), seen as a moderate, said he would not support the Senate version of the bill, telling reporters that the proposal “is simply not the answer.”
Heller (photo) joined four conservative Senate Republicans, Rand Paul (Ky.), Ted Cruz (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), who said Thursday they would not support the bill because it didn’t go far enough repealing Obamacare.
Senate Republicans can only afford to lose two of their own and still pass the bill through their chamber.
And whatever bill they come up with after revisions would still have to satisfy House Republicans who passed their own version last month — which also appeared less likely to happen.
Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), the chairman of the conservative Freedom Caucus who helped negotiate the House version of the bill, said the Senate version “does not have enough conservative support” to pass in the House, according to CNN. FORMER ACTING Attorney General Sally Yates resurfaced on Friday to rip the Justice Department’s stance on criminal justice reform.
In a Washington Post op-ed, Yates, fired by Trump in January, condemns Attorney General Jeff Sessions for reinstating mandatory drug sentences and accused him of “stoking fear...(that) the United States is gripped by a rising epidemic of violent crime.”
The piece was was a response to an op-ed penned by Sessions last week in which he argued for a hard-nosed approach to crime and drug offenses.