Cuts to Medicaid will harm poor Americans seeking help for opioid addiction
Providence — Proposals by US senate Republicans to phase out the expansion of the Medicaid health insurance programme for low-income Americans, could hurt state efforts to fight the country’s opioid addiction crisis, governors warned on Thursday. Democratic and Republican governors meeting in Rhode Island warned that many residents of their states were relying on Medicaid to get treatment for opioid addiction, which grips an estimated 3-million Americans and killed 33,000 people in the US in 2015, according to federal data. "We’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think what’s happening with healthcare in Congress right now is affecting this issue," North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, told his counterparts at a meeting of the National Governors Association in Providence. "We cannot have millions of Americans lose their health coverage and still effectively attack this crisis. We can’t significantly reduce Medicaid spending and still be successful in fighting opioid addiction...
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