Renacci: Medicaid isn’t helping opioid crisis
Medicaid, the federal program grprogram that provides the bulk of Ohio’s government funding for drug treatment, is not helping in the fight against opioids, U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci said Thursday.
Rather, he said, arresting people who overdose and cracking down harder on drug dealers should be at least part of the solution.
“We’re the No. 1 state in opioid addiction,” Renacci said. “Why are the 19 states that didn’t expand Medicaid doing better than us?”
Renacci, of Wadsworth, is one of four Republicans running to succeed the term-limited John Kasich as governor next year. He said he always objected to expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. The Medicaid expansion is one of Kasich’s signature achievements as governor.
The expansion provided 700,000 Ohioans with health coverage and it provides $650 million a year in drug
treatment as part of the $1 billion that the state is spending to fight the opioid crisis. However, Medicaid is financially unsustainable, said Renacci, who sits on the House Budget Committee.
Besides, he said, there’s no evidence that Medicaid expansion, with its great increase in treatment funding, is helping with the crisis. He stopped a step short of the contention of some conservatives that the Medicaid expansion has actually caused, or at least strongly contributed to, the opioid problem.
Statistics ranking states in terms of “addiction” can be hard to come by. But Ohio has for several years ranked at or near the top for opioid-related deaths.
But several studies don’t back Renacci’s claim that expanding Medicaid hasn’t helped in the drug battle.
For starters, the crisis in Ohio and surrounding states started before the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010. Also, some states might have been motivated by the burgeoning opioid crisis to opt into the Medicaid expansion, illustrating
the maxim that correlation doesn’t imply causation.
Even so, Renacci said, “I don’t buy that Medicaid expansion dollars are what’s necessary.”
He said he’s formed an advisory panel of recovering opioid addicts who told him it would help to get rid of Ohio’s “Good Samaritan” law, which shields callers from prosecution for drug possession during the first two times they call authorities about an overdose.
The advisory group told Renacci the “law doesn’t work because when you overdose and there’s no ... consequences, you just go overdose again.”
A businessman elected to Congress in 2010, Renacci said the other Republicans in the governor’s race might be trying to align themselves with President Donald Trump now that they’re competing to win a GOP primary. But Renacci said he was supporting Trump well before it was clear that he would be the nominee.
Also running in the Republican primary are Attorney General Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Jon Husted and Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor.