Critics: GOP Healthcare Bill Doesn't Do Enough to Battle Opioid Crisis

Critics of the GOP healthcare bill say cuts to Medicaid and only $2 billion included for substance abuse disorders isn’t enough to battle the national opioid epidemic, creating another roadblock in getting the legislation passed, The Hill reports.

"It’s just unconscionable to me that anybody who is serious about dealing with this opioid addiction could be satisfied with the bill — even supporting $45 billion, let alone $2 billion," said Michael Botticelli, the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Obama. The bill, he said, would "really have disastrous consequences for people who are struggling with opioid addiction."

Drug overdose deaths are the leading cause of injury death in the U.S., and the death count rose 19 percent from 2015 to 2016 according to an investigation by the New York Times. The largest increases in drug overdose deaths happened in Maryland, Florida, Pennsylvania and Maine.

Republican Sens. Shelly Moore Capito, W.Va., and Rob Portman, Ohio, want an increase in funds to help battle the epidemic and proposed $45 billion in aid over the next decade.

West Virginia and Ohio expanded Medicaid, which is a large payer of behavioral services, but the Senate bill will start to make deeper cuts to the program starting in 2025.

"The lack of robust funding for opioids is just one problem in this bill, but a big one," a Senate GOP aide wrote in an email to the Hill. "We have to ensure that those currently receiving opioid treatment under Medicaid expansion can continue to have treatment under a new system. And right now that wouldn’t happen."

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