Maintain key funding for addiction services
The Times Union is shining a welcome light on the need for more support and recovery services for people struggling with opioid addiction (“Long haul to defeat fentanyl,” Jan. 5).
Dozens of safety-net providers work tirelessly to help New Yorkers access harm reduction and recovery services and also the wraparound services that tackle illnesses and instabilities related to opioid use.
Clients need physical and mental health, housing, and food support. Providing these services on-site means they are more likely to participate and have better health outcomes.
But at a time when, as noted in Raga Justin’s article, “current funding feeds into a shaky health care system that has not prioritized the lives of drug users,” those critical supports are further threatened by the state’s plan to divert key prescription drug cost savings we need through the Medicaid 340B drug program.
In short, if Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Legislature refuse to cancel the Medicaid pharmacy benefit carveout in the state budget, the savings that community health providers like ours access to fund our services will be taken away, blowing gaping holes in our budgets. Without that lifeline, services will dry up.
Ironically, the state will be cutting off those of us who provide the very preventive care services that the governor announced in her State of the State address that she wants to expand for Medicaid enrollees. The timing couldn’t be worse.
Our most vulnerable New Yorkers, the ones who need trusted community-based safety-net providers they feel safe turning to, cannot afford to have the state pad its coffers on their backs. The governor and lawmakers must reverse the 340B carveout. Lives quite literally depend on it.
Perry James Junjulas
Albany The writer is the executive
director of the Albany Damien Center, which helps people affected by HIV and
AIDS. who happens to be Latino is mainstream now, it shouldn’t even be remarked upon. Hochul’s making this the appointment’s centerpiece is identity politics pandering that actually detracts from the judge’s capabilities and virtues.
The same was true of President Joe Biden appointing Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. A great choice. But his having previously pledged to appoint a Black woman made it seem as though Jackson was merely the best available Black woman — not the best person, period.
Anyhow, “progressives” are opposing LaSalle as anti-union, anti-women, anti-due process, et cetera. What this really is is performative politics. Because there’s no there there. Ginned up to mount a high horse of umbrage about. They’ve combed through his hundreds of judicial decisions and picked out a few that went against unions, or abortion rights, or due process claimants — as if they should win every case.
An Albany Law School professor has labeled this “absurd.” Jonathan Lippman, a former New York State Court of Appeals chief judge, based on a broad review of LaSalle’s extensive record, argues that what really characterizes it is the conscientious application of the law, precedent, and proper legal principles. Which is what a judge is supposed to do. Not be a warrior for a particular point of view.
Frank S. Robinson