Carper says repealing ACA would cripple the fight against opioid addiction
Friday Sen. Tom Caper (D) and Delaware's Attorney General Matt Denn spent their morning in New Castle County warning people how detrimental the Senate Republican version of healthcare would be to the fight against opioid addiction.
According to Carper and Denn the bill unveiled Thursday by Senate Republicans would make treatment unaffordable for many who need it.
"It's even worse than we thought," Denn said. "Just to be completely clear, passage of this bill will mean more people without drug treatment, more people addicted to opioid drugs, more lives ruined and more crime," Denn said.
According to Dave Humes, a board member for Attack Addiction, the Republican plan would drastically change the way treatment is paid for in the first state.
"Currently under the Medicaid expansion program 50 percent of treatment services are covered with Delaware covering the remaining 50 percent. Under these bills Medicaid would cover only 10 percent of treatment leaving Delaware to cover 90 percent of treatment costs. Never have so few been so cruel to so many," Humes said.
To put that in perspective, Bettina Riveros from Christiana Care said 70 percent of the patient they see with substance abuse disorders have Medicaid.
Friday Sen. Carper said the health care plan did not make sense given the current state of the opioid epidemic.
"We have this huge crisis with opioid addiction and we're going to cut that treatment to the people that need it and we're going to turn around and give that money as a tax cut to people who frankly in many cases don't need it, that's wrong," Carper said.
Counselor to the president, Kellyanne Conway said to reporters that she doesn't want people to worry and added that there are more benefits to the republican health care plan then people may be aware of.
"I just don't want everybody scaring people to think that they're going to lose their benefits and their coverage without giving a full accounting of everything that this includes includes very generous expansions of health savings accounts funding. Why is that important because it gives people more control over their health care spending it even allows spouses to do something called catch up investment," Conway said.
Senate Republicans have said they plan to vote on the bill July 4, a timeline Sen. Carper said is too soon for a piece of legislation that impacts so many Americans.
Carper said he and his fellow senators will spend the time leading up to the vote pushing for unanimous consent to have public hearings about the legislation and debate on whether to add amendments.
If the bill fails though, Carper said there may be light at the end of the tunnel.
"I think if the republicans are not successful in repealing the affordable care act what it will do is create a dynamic where Democrats and Republicans are ready to sit down and say ok we've tried to do this all Democrats, we've tried to do this all Republicans let's see maybe we can work together," Carper said.
Republicans need at least 50 votes to pass the bill. A 50-50 split would leave Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie.
