美国国家公共电台 NPR Communities Key To Fighting Opioid Crisis, HHS Secretary Says

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

The Trump 1 administration is making new moves to combat a national health crisis.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Drug overdoses are now the leading cause of accidental death in our country. And opioid overdose deaths have nearly quadrupled since 1999. This is a total epidemic 2.

MARTIN: That's President Trump at an event about substance abuse in March. The president has talked a lot about fighting opioid addiction 3, but there are concerns his policies might actually take resources away from those who need help.

I spoke 4 with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price about that on the heels of a listening tour that he went on this week around the country to discuss opioid addiction. That tour took Price to West Virginia and other states hard hit by painkiller 5 and heroin 6 overdoses.

TOM PRICE: The purpose of this tour is to punctuate 7 the president's commitment to solving the opioid crisis. The numbers, as you know, are absolutely astounding 8 - 52,000 overdose deaths in 2015, 33,000 of those by opioid overdose. So what we're trying to do is to learn from folks on the ground. What are their best practices? What kinds of things are they doing that are working to solve this crisis?

MARTIN: When you were in West Virginia. You talked about expanding the resources that states have on hand to solve the epidemic to solve this challenge. What resources specifically are you talking about, and who might get them?

PRICE: Well, this administration's commitment to this is unparalleled. There are hundreds of millions of dollars that are coming forth 9 to fight the opioid crisis. Just two or three weeks ago, we let from the federal government about $485 million of grants to states. So resources are important, but they're not everything because we're still losing as a nation in this arena 10.

MARTIN: So you talk about all the resources that have been allocated 11. At the same time, the Trump administration's new budget plan proposes massive cuts to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, which has historically been the agency that leads on combating drug abuse. It's proposed that that budget gets slashed 12 by 95 percent. How do you square that?

PRICE: Yeah. This is an office within the White House, not within the Department of Health and Human Services but within the White House. And I think if you step back and look at the entire federal spending on the opioid crisis, folks will see that, in fact, by hundreds of millions of dollars more spending is occurring on the opioid crisis. So...

MARTIN: So was it just viewed that it wasn't effective, that the office under the auspices 13 of the executive branch wasn't working, and so there was a decision to reallocate that money through HHS?

PRICE: The budget's a work in progress, so I don't know that any final decisions have been made. But the president's commitment to this challenge is unquestioned.

MARTIN: You have supported the effort to repeal 14 and replace the Affordable 15 Care Act. How does the new health care proposal help deal with the opioid crisis?

PRICE: Well, the health care proposal itself is an effort to try to save the health care system from the challenges that it currently has. Premiums 16 are going up. Deductibles are going up. So it's failing the very people that it's supposed to help. So the goal of any new health care legislation is to improve that system so that every single American has access to the kind of coverage 17 that they want for themselves and for their families.

MARTIN: Although on this issue, the bill actually overturns a provision in the Affordable Care Act that had required insurance companies to provide coverage for substance abuse treatment. The new bill gives insurers, as I understand it, an out so they don't have to do that anymore.

PRICE: No. What it does is stipulate 18 where those decisions should be made. Should those decisions be made at the federal level, or should they be made at the state level? And there's a mountain of evidence that demonstrates that when those decisions are made at the state level, they're more responsive to the individuals being represented by the constituents 19.

MARTIN: Tom Price is the secretary of Health and Human Services. Thank you so much for your time.

PRICE: Thanks, good to be with you.