Posted on 01/13/2017 3:58:00 PM PST by E. Pluribus Unum
Advocates for substance-abuse treatment are hoping to protect the insurance coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act by lobbying Republican legislators in states hit hard by the opioid-addiction crisis.
The advocacy groups aim to “start educating legislators” on how a repeal of the ACA, without a replacement plan to preserve coverage, would undermine efforts to address a public-health crisis that has become a major political issue, according to Gary Mendell, founder of Shatterproof, a New York-based nonprofit that lobbies for legislation to fight addiction.
Shatterproof, which plans to spend $300,000 on the campaign, is working alongside the National Council for Behavioral Health, a Washington, D.C., organization that represents the interests of 2,800 providers of mental health and addiction treatment.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
What is their success rate?
It wasn’t under Obamacare before.
I don’t know about this.
Medical coverage is MEDICAL coverage. For MEDICAL issues.
I don’t think addiction, is a medical issue per se. It is in a sense, but I think it is also a personal issue.
However there are valid medical issues which need to be covered, because our system leaves (far) too many people non-covered.
But I don’t know if I agree with this.
Repeal and replace Obamacare for people with valid medical issues who are not otherwise covered.
This however seems like the PC middle, and I am not sure.
The ones that are frankly religious will come out best... that’d be my full expectation. Because the patient needs to take a religious attitude too in order to qualify, and that’s the real answer to addictions. As the old catchphrase went, high on Jesus.
Of course our lefties will robustly rebel against this being a public program. This would be the point at which dealmaker Donald should talk about pushing that entire system private, rather than killing the golden goose over constitutional niceties.
don’t gore my ox....
Addictions are a trouble flag that people need God. We’ve treated them either as a thing to try to ban with police and courts, or to try to address with cold medical science. Neither one has stellar success. I don’t even think draconian regimes like Singapore really do, because though they will kill a street drug dealer, they probably aren’t any more careful about prescriptions than the rest of the world is. So when Singapore says they pushed the drug abuse rate to many zeroes after the decimal point, they mean that this is what is left over after the prescription abusers.
It should be like everything else covered under the new plan - part of a menu that people can select or not - a sixty year old couple with no kids living with them have no need for abuse coverage - a middle-aged couple with a pre-teen child or two just might want to include in their plan - the days of mandating coverage for everything some bureaucrat thinks might be a problem should be long gone....
Actually, yes it is a disease, not a “personal” or moral issue. There needs to be adequate coverage for effective inpatient stays both which public and private insurances “cover”. Presently, ppl are dying because they cannot access treatment at all or not for more than a few days. I believe our bew,President has this issue on his short list, thankfully.
no. let them use their own money to kill themselves.
It can be (in fact is) a both-and thing.
It is a moral obligation not to walk in the snow without shoes, but yes medical science can treat the frostbite.
So what do we do if we have a plague of shoeless snow walking. Both sides have to be looked at.
I like my government to be limited.
If the addict does not stay clean for a year, the wages paid to the people who provided the services, must be refunded to the insurance company, by those who provided the shoddy service.
The idea that a government -- especially the Federal government -- should me mandating ANY kinds of coverage for ANYTHING is what made ObamaCare such a disaster to begin with.
My father told me that if I ever got involved in narcotics he'd consider himself a total failure as a human being, kill me, and spend the rest of his life in prison.
It worked.
Alcoholism and drug addiction themselves are not moral issues; rather they are considered by the AMA to be brain diseases (medical). The behaviors which may result from these diseases going untreated can show a lapse in ones’ moral compass. Without adequate inpatient treatment and/or a long term, protracted course of care, one will never go into remission and live responsibly and with accountability.
Yep. Totally agree.
As I recall success rate of addiction treatments by medical means is the same as placebo. In other words, worthless. Often they just hook the addicts on legal drugs and call them cured. But they are still addicts. The profit just shift from illicit pushers to legal pushers.
“”states hit hard by the opioid-addiction crisis.””
It doesn’t make any sense that there are some states that have a problem with this and states that don’t. I seem to recall during the presidential campaigns, a lot of attention was paid to the New England states for that problem. Does New England just have more drug addicts than any other portion of the country? Hmmm - that might explain the idiocy coming out of that part of the country. Current addicts? I could name a bunch from that part of the nation who always seem to be under SOME outside influence.
PERHAPS WE NEED DRUG TESTING FOR THE NE CONGRESS CRITTERS! You say - discrimination? NAH - just preservation for the rest of us!
Actually no dude, from what I see they have a super problem in Ohio and surrounding states big time.
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