Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell talked tough Friday morning about how "left-wing agitators" were interfering in Senate business, but added "I can only speak for myself, I'm not afraid of protesters." Which is news to the constituents he ran away from last week back home in Kentucky. McConnell is going back to Kentucky next week for the Presidents' Day recess, but he's only scheduled to meet friendly groups as of now, like various chambers of commerce.
That might be because with friendly crowds, he doesn't have to worry about being hit with the hard realities of life back home. Like how repealing Obamacare is going to halt opioid treatment gains in the state.
Repeal without replacement of funds would have “particularly adverse effects” on states like Kentucky and Pennsylvania, wrote Harvard health economics professor Richard Frank and Sherry Glied, dean of the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University.
Both states used the health care law’s Medicaid expansion to promote medication-assisted treatment for opioid abusers. Medicaid now pays for 35 to 50 percent of all medication-assisted treatment in Kentucky, the study found. In Pennsylvania, it’s 30 percent. […]
The Medicaid expansion in Kentucky made substance-abuse treatment available to many more people and also increased the depth and variety of services they can get, said Steve Shannon, executive director of the Kentucky Association of Regional Programs. The associations represents community mental health centers, which provide substance abuse treatment.
Shannon said there is a concern that eliminating the Affordable Care Act could mean less funding to help people battling addiction, which he contends is the top public-policy problem facing the state.
Let's hope that some of the folks paying to see McConnell at these various chamber luncheons are hospital administrators and doctors and nurses and other health professionals who can ask him just what he plans to do about the state's top policy issue. And what he intends to do to make sure that there's still affordable, accessible health care for all the people relying on Obamacare.