Medicaid and addiction

More than 1,000 people accused of misusing program to abuse drugs

A congressional report says fraud in the program helps drive opioid abuse.

WASHINGTON – A new congressional report suggests that Medicaid helps drive the nation’s opioid crisis by making it easier for enrollees to abuse, then resell the highly addictive painkillers.

At least 1,072 people have been convicted or charged nationwide since 2010 for improperly using Medicaid to obtain prescription opioids, some of which were resold on the nation’s streets, according to the report by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The number of criminal defendants increased 18% in the four years after Medicaid expanded under the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, the report says.

“I’m not making the claim that this is just because of Medicaid expansion … this phenomenon happened way before Medicaid expansion,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., the committee’s chairman, said during a hearing Wednesday. But “this is an unintended consequence.”

The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, was ill with the flu and missed the hearing, but she took issue with the report.

“This idea that Medicaid expansion is fueling the rise in opioid deaths is total hogwash,” McCaskill said in prepared remarks. “It is not supported by the facts. And I am concerned that this committee is using taxpayer dollars to push out this misinformation to advance a political agenda.”

The report highlights a number of ways that Medicaid recipients abuse the program to obtain opioids. The criminal activities range from beneficiaries simply selling opioids they obtained through the Medicaid program to fraud involving Medicaid reimbursement.

At Wednesday’s hearing, experts described, in often gruesome detail, the lengths to which patients go to get the drugs.

In Tennessee, a couple took turns intentionally burning themselves on their lower legs with boiling water, then went to different emergency rooms to obtain pain medication paid for through TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid, Tennessee Inspector General Emmanuel Tyndall said.

A manager in a doctor’s office in Tennessee was charged with 87 counts of fraudulently obtaining the drugs after stealing prescription slips, forging the doctor’s signature, then writing out prescriptions. The woman admitted using 25 hydrocodone pills per day, and some of the drugs were charged to TennCare, Tyndall said.