BY RUSSELL TURNER
MOST FEARED WORDS
One of my favorite quotes from our late president Ronald Reagan is, “We are from the government and we’re here to help.” While the statement is humorous, there is much truth to it. Over the past several weeks there has been much in the news about the opioid painkiller abuse in our nation. It is a sad fact that some people are more prone to addiction than others, but when more illegal sources of the drugs are on the street it makes the addiction problem worse.
The opioids are the leading cause of death for Americans under age 50. Opioid overdoses have quadrupled since 1999, and fatalities are soaring. I recently read an article about the link between the increase of opioid addiction and the states that went with the Medicaid expansion under the Obama healthcare law. According to a federal Health and Human Services analysis the overdose deaths per million residents rose twice as fast in the 29 Medicaid expansion states—those that increased eligibility to 138% from 100% of the poverty line—than in the 21 non-expansion states between 2013 and 2015. When comparing statistics from neighboring states, the results should cause our elected leaders to think twice about expanding any entitlement programs. Deaths increased twice as much in New Hampshire (108%) and Maryland (44%)—expansion states—than in Maine (55%) and Virginia (22%). Drug fatalities shot up by 41% in Ohio while only climbing 3% in non-expansion Wisconsin.
I have found that many people have a hard time understanding what is causing these numbers. According to an interview of a police officer in Wisconsin, he contends 240 oxycodone pills can be purchased with a Medicaid card for a $1 co-pay and resold for $4,000 on the street. According to the interview a single Vicodin pill can be sold for $50. Just a couple days ago I was talking to my family doctor about this topic and he was not surprised in the least about the findings. He said that he had experienced patients trying to do the same as in the article.
While all of the do-gooders in our government think they are doing great things by expanding Medicaid, in essence they are setting up the environment to promote addiction. Either the people are getting hooked on cheap drugs or they are getting addicted to the easy cash from selling pain killers on the black market. All across our nation states are clamoring for more money to create treatment programs for the addicted; that may be fine, but first we need to take a hard look at the fraud in the current Medicaid system. A wise man once told me if something is free it is awfully easy to get too much of it. Another thing that would solve many of our problems is for the American people to wean themselves from the most dangerous addiction, that being government addiction.
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