Alfonse D'Amato

Obamacare’s deleterious effect on the war on drugs

Posted

Not only is Obamacare a poor health care plan from a policy perspective, but now many doctors and health care professionals believe that it is contributing to one of the worst epidemics facing this nation, our state and Long Island: opioid addiction.

Americans are just as concerned about drug abuse as they are about terrorism and the economy. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, 1 in 15 people who take non-medical-prescription pain relievers will try heroin within 10 years.

Opioids do not discriminate based on race or socioeconomic status. Here in suburban Long Island, the number of fatalities from heroin overdoses has surged, with more than 100 deaths in Nassau and Suffolk counties combined in each of the past three years. Things have gotten so bad that Queens District Attorney Richard Brown has dubbed the Long Island Expressway the “Heroin Highway” based on the number of Long Islanders traveling to New York City in search of recreational drugs and heroin.

These deaths are tragic, but avoidable. Time and time again, we hear of parents losing teenagers to overdoses. And now it’s not exclusive to high school kids. The epidemic is spreading to people in their 20s, 30s and beyond.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nationwide, since 1999, fatal overdoses from prescription opioids have quadrupled. More than 47,000 Americans died due to overdoses in 2014, a record high, and more than 60 percent of those deaths involved opioids.

Drug use is a significant contributor to prison overcrowding. From a health care perspective, emergency rooms across the country are overwhelmed as well, as they treat thousands of overdoses every day. In many cases, these patients receive prescriptions for opioids, and then continue to misuse and abuse these drugs.

So why are these prescriptions being issued if this country has a drug crisis? Well, Obamacare features an initiative that is meant to reward quality care. Sounds reasonable enough, except that it leads to fraud and misuse.

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