NHeLP Comments Urge Senate to Safeguard Medicaid in Addressing Opioid Crisis

Executive Summary

The National Health Law Program in comments to the Senate Finance Committee urges lawmakers to support Medicaid and its funding structure in efforts to address the opioid epidemic, which “now kills more individuals than HIV/AIDs did at the height of that epidemic in the 1990s.” The National Health Law Program also urged the Senate committee to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to advance “illegal and harmful waivers that will increase the burden of the opioid epidemic, such as those that seek to implement work requirements and drug testing on Medicaid beneficiaries.”