Trump administration says it's 'concerned' about opioid crisis that 'exploded' under Obamacare

pulse

February 22, 2018 6:02 AM

President Donald Trump's Council of Economic Advisers noted in a post Wednesday that the opioid crisis and Obamacare implementation occurred that the same time.

President Donald Trump's Council of Economic Advisers released a report Wednesday on the administration's healthcare policies.
In the report, the CEA noted that the increase in opioid-related deaths exploded around the same time as the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Republicans have suggested that Obamacare's expansion of Medicaid may have contributed to the opioid crisis, though research disputes the assertion.

President Donald Trump's Council of Economic Advisers released a report Wednesday detailing the administration's work to roll back the Affordable Care Act, and at one point in the report noted that the law's passage came around the same time as the opioid crisis worsened.

The post criticized the law known as Obamacare for its focus on bringing down the number of uninsured Americans, which the CEA said did not necessarily translate to a healthier population.

As part of the post, the CEA authors also discussed the growing number of overdose deaths from opioids.

While the CEA did not directly tie the ACA to the growing opioid crisis, other Republicans have recently been more explicit about a possible link between the law's implementation and the opioid crisis.

Sen. Ron Johnson,

This report is not meant to suggest that Medicaid, or any other federal program, is the only factor contributing to the opioid epidemic," Johnson's report said. "But if Medicaid is helping to drive the epidemic, it stands to reason that expanding the program — particularly to people most susceptible to abuse — could worsen the problem. The epidemic has indeed spiraled into a national crisis since the Obamacare Medicaid expansion took effect in 2014."

DJ Norquist, chief of staff for the CEA, told Business Insider that Johnson's report resembles their offices thinking on the issue.

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