Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRepublicans Just Tried to Claim that Medicaid Caused the Opioid Epidemic. Surprise, SurpriseTheyre
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/republicans-just-tried-to-claim-that-medicaid-caused-the-opioid-epidemic-surprise-surprise-theyre-wrong/Republicans Just Tried to Claim that Medicaid Caused the Opioid Epidemic. Surprise, SurpriseTheyre Wrong.
Nice try.
Julia LurieJan. 17, 2018 4:45 PM
Republicans seem to have found a new culprit to blame for the opioid epidemic: Medicaid.
Every time a hard working American pays their taxes, they are inadvertently funding drug dealers with a new supply of high powered opioids that are poisoning our schools and our streets, testified Otto Shalk, a prosecuting attorney from Indiana.
On Wednesday, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, led by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), held a hearing on the supposed connection between Medicaid and Americas drug crisis. Johnsons thesis, summed up in a report his team published today, is that Medicaid recipients are taking advantage of their free healthcare by selling their pain pills. The evidence, he argues, is the fact that states that expanded Medicaid have higher overdose ratesand his finding that 1,072 Americans have been charged or convicted of improperly using Medicaid to get pain pills since 2010.
The theory, which has been making its way around the conservative blogosphere for months, adds to the Republican critique of Medicaid: Free healthcare for the poor is not only disincentivizing Americans from working by providing free healthcareits enabling those on it to make money by diverting their pills. Every time a hard working American pays their taxes, they are inadvertently funding drug dealers with a new supply of high powered opioids that are poisoning our schools and our streets, testified Otto Shalk, a prosecuting attorney from Indiana. With the increased amount of the impoverished having access to medical care, there is a greater likelihood that those who are impoverished are going to see the opportunity for turning a profit, albeit illegal, on the street.
The thing is, the argument doesnt stand up to scrutiny. Its true that overdose rates are higher in the 31 states that expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and its true that opioid abuse is more common among poor Americans. But Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act took place in 2014nearly twenty years after overdose rates started creeping up, and three years after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the crisis an epidemic. (Check out our timeline of the epidemic for more details.)
Plus, todays opioid epidemic is fueled by illicit fentanyl and heroin, which kill far more Americans than prescription opioids. Theres ample evidence to suggest that these illicit drug markets sprang up in the same places where opioids were overprescribed, and many of these states would later expand Medicaid. Todays epidemic started with overzealous pharmaceutical marketing and liberal prescribing, not access to healthcare, noted Andrew Kolodny, co-director of opioid policy research at Brandeis University, in his testimony. As he said, Opioid overdoses have been increasing in people with all types of insurance and in people from all economic groups, from rich to poor.
The irony is that Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act gave millions of Americans access to addiction treatment coveragewhich researchers on the right and left agree is key to solving the drug crisis. (Brandi, a recovering drug user who attributes her progress to her newfound addiction treatment coverage, is one example.) But recent Republican legislationlike the repeal of the individual mandate under recently enacted tax plan, or the proposed Medicaid work requirementscould cripple that progress. As Keith Humphreys, a Stanford psychiatry professor and Obama policy advisor, told me last year, Obamacare was designed to be very broad, but at the same time we knew that if there was anything that this would help a lot for, its addiction.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
3 replies, 1185 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (1)
ReplyReply to this post
3 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Republicans Just Tried to Claim that Medicaid Caused the Opioid Epidemic. Surprise, SurpriseTheyre (Original Post)
marble falls
Jan 2018
OP
Any way they can. They want us gone and they do not care how. Once we're worked out or there is....
marble falls
Jan 2018
#2
Eliot Rosewater
(31,109 posts)1. GoP wants to kill old people and poor people.
This has been true for over 40 years and I have been saying it for a while but still hardly anybody pays attention.
marble falls
(57,081 posts)2. Any way they can. They want us gone and they do not care how. Once we're worked out or there is....
no work for us we are redundant.
JDC
(10,127 posts)3. Ron Johnson is a horrible person. What ever happened to WI?