Trump's Approach To The Opioid Epidemic: Neglect Treatment, Ignore The Experts

WASHINGTON – Since taking office, President Donald Trump has systematically removed or limited the power of federal officials and government offices that have the expertise to confront the nation’s opioid epidemic. Trump asked Surgeon General Vivek Murthy to resign in late April. He still has an acting director running the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Although he backtracked on his reported plan to essentially gut his Office of National Drug Control Policy, staffers would be wise to polish their resumes.  Trump’s new budget proposal cuts all federal drug prevention programs by roughly 11 percent. The former director of the CDC, Dr. Tom Frieden, vented on Twitter that the 1.2 billion cut to his former agency would thwart efforts at preventing the complications that come with heroin use such as HIV infections. These moves follow Trump’s recent endorsement of the House’s health care bill that would no longer require insurance companies to cover treatment for addiction. If signed into law in its current form, more than a million Americans could potentially lose their access to treatment services. That bill cuts Medicaid by $880 billion. And Trump’s proposed budget goes even further, with another $616 billion cut to Medicaid over 10 years that would effectively cripple the government’s ability to fund and expand care. We face a national opioid crisis. We need to use all the tools we have to help pe...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news