Concerns Over Ever-Worsening Opioid Crisis Could Throw Wrench In Plans To Roll Back Medicaid

The Wall Street Journal:
Opioid Crisis Complicates GOP’s Health-Law Push

The nation’s worsening opioid crisis has become another sticking point in Republican plans to dismantle major portions of the Affordable Care Act, with key GOP senators hesitating to support a bill that could threaten addiction treatment for millions of people. Several provisions of the ACA, also known as Obamacare, allowed millions of Americans seeking substance-abuse treatment to gain coverage, including through an expansion of the Medicaid health program for the poor. But the House bill repealing the ACA, passed in early May, would roll back that Medicaid expansion beginning in 2020 and allow insurance companies to charge some people with drug addictions higher premiums or deny them substance-abuse coverage. (Nunn, 6/11)

NPR:
GOP Cuts To Medicaid Would Threaten Addiction Treatment, Doctors Say

Republicans in both the House and the Senate are considering big cuts to Medicaid. But those cuts endanger addiction treatment, which many people receive through the government health insurance program. Charlene Yurgaitis is one of the people who’s been helped. She’s 35 and lives in Lancaster, Penn., and once supervised 17 people at an insurance company. But when some college students moved in next door about a decade ago, they became friends and she started doing oxycontin with them. Then she moved onto heroin and harder drugs. (Allen, 6/11)