Pennsylvania Declares a State of Emergency for the Opioid Epidemic
Last week Pennsylvania became the sixth state in the country to declare a state of emergency for the heroin and opioid epidemic. With over 4,600 drug overdose deaths in 2016 alone, and over 5,000 deaths estimated for 2017, this declaration comes at a critical time for Pennsylvanians.
Insurers Make Historic Commitment to Improve Access and Quality of Addiction Treatment
In a groundbreaking announcement, 12 large insurers, covering over 240 million lives, pledged to adopt eight evidence-based “National Principles of Care” for the treatment of substance use disorder (SUD). The initiative is designed to improve care for the 21 million Americans who have an SUD, only 11% of whom receive any treatment at all.
Answering the Call: Facing Addiction in America
Last week the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, released the groundbreaking, comprehensive report Facing Addiction in American: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. The report comes at a critical juncture, with more than 27 million Americans misusing illicit and prescription drugs, and more than 66 million misusing alcohol.
Show Me the Money: Economic Evaluations of Opioid Use Disorder Interventions
This Issue Brief discusses treatments for opioid use disorders and summarizes a new systematic review of economic evaluations of these interventions. The review reveals strong evidence that methadone maintenance therapy is an economically advantageous form of treatment; the economic evidence for buprenorphine and naltrexone treatments is more limited.
President Obama Targets Opioid Abuse Epidemic
The White House announced this week a series of Administration actions aimed at slowing the opioid epidemic, in addition to President Obama’s $1.1 billion budget request. This new initiative comes amid a flurry of activity combating substance abuse.
Senate Passes Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Bill
Congress is getting serious about the substance abuse epidemic. Today the Senate passed, 94–1, a bipartisan opioid abuse bill (S. 524 - Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016). This rare show of collaboration between parties comes as the realities of opioid and substance abuse ravaging communities across the country takes center stage in the current election cycle.
The Cadillac Tax – The Long Goodbye?
We may be witnessing the death of the Cadillac tax…a slow, Washington, DC style, death. The two-year delay in the tax, included in the end-of-year budget deal, was the first major legislative change to the ACA and the tax’s first figurative “nail in the coffin”.