Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Policies To Address Opioid Crisis Would Cause People To Turn To Heroin, Fentanyl In The Short-Term
The New York Times: The Opioid Dilemma: Saving Lives In The Long Run Can Take Lives In The Short Run
The unavoidable tension in attacking the opioid crisis is which time frame you’re talking about. In the short term, many policies that would limit opioid prescriptions for the purpose of saving lives would cause people to turn to heroin or fentanyl. In fact, over a 5-to-10-year period, that would increase deaths, not decrease them, according to a simulation study published in the American Journal of Public Health. The study was conducted by three Stanford University researchers, Allison Pitt, Keith Humphreys and Margaret Brandeau. (Frakt, 3/4)
The Baltimore Sun: Maryland Made A Plan To Help People Leaving Prison Get Drug Treatment — But It Never Used It
Fatal drug overdoses had been climbing for years when Maryland health officials decided to target a particularly vulnerable group: Those leaving prison or jail. They have high rates of addiction, but low rates of insurance for treatment. So the state sought federal permission to skip the usual paperwork to get them temporary Medicaid cards. ... Maryland health officials now say presumptive eligibility was meant only as a backup. And the backup hasn’t been needed because Medicaid applications now can be approved in as little as 24 hours — if applicants have all the proper paperwork. (Cohn, 3/4)
The Washington Post: Teenagers Getting Opioids Wisdom Teeth Work May Be At Addiction Risk
A few days before extracting my teenager’s wisdom teeth, an oral surgeon wrote him a prescription for painkillers. My son filled it but never felt a need for anything stronger than ibuprofen. Three years later, I found an unopened bottle of Percocet — an opioid — in the back of a bathroom cabinet. I had no idea a dentist had prescribed my then 19-year-old the highly addictive pills. Likewise, until recently, dentists seemed to have had no idea they may have been helping to feed an epidemic that resulted in a record 70,237 U.S. drug overdose deaths in 2017. (Cohen, 3/3)
The Washington Post: D.C. Opioid Crisis: Overdose Initiatives Still In Planning Stages, Officials Say
More than two months after D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) released a far-reaching plan to cut opioid overdose deaths in half by late 2020, key programs described in the plan have not been launched, according to city officials and service providers. The anti-opioid initiatives include a dramatic expansion of the availability of the overdose antidote naloxone and new treatment programs for overdose survivors in hospital emergency rooms. They were laid out by the mayor in response to one of the nation’s most severe increases in fatal overdoses over the past several years, most caused by heroin laced with the synthetic opioid fentanyl. (Jamison, 3/3)
