While lawmakers on Capitol Hill are debating health care, Virginia is in the midst of an opioid crisis. So how would the bills currently being debated address that crisis?
Late last year, Virginia declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency -- one that might be much more difficult to treat under the proposals now under consideration in Washington. Lauran Goren at the Commonwealth Institute says those bills would undo years of work by state officials to get a handle on the problem.
“The bills would put us back a decade in time to when states allowed insurance companies to exclude coverage for some essential health care, and that very likely includes substance abuse treatment.”
One of the treatment services that might be on the chopping block is the Governor’s Access Plan, known as GAP, that provides addiction recovery services for low-income individuals with serious mental illness. Jill Hanken at the Virginia Poverty Law Center fears that kind of program would be the first to get cut.
“A program like the GAP program, which is a waiver service — an extra service beyond what’s absolutely required under Medicaid is just the kind of program that might have to be altered or eliminated.”
The Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services estimates that the bill currently under consideration in the Senate would cost Virginia’s Medicaid program at least $1.7 billion over seven years. That could mean dramatic cuts to addiction treatment at a time when the opioid crisis continues to spiral out of control.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.