美国国家公共电台 NPR GOP's Proposed Cuts To Medicaid Threaten Treatment For Opioid Addiction

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

One of the really big challenges in revamping health care is funding Medicaid, the federal program for low-income or needy 1 people. House Republicans voted to cut it dramatically this spring. Behind closed doors, the Senate is looking at whether it should do the same. But advocates say one of Medicaid's benefits is getting people addiction 2 treatment, especially in the middle of the current opioid crisis. Member station WITF's Ben Allen has this from Pennsylvania.

CHARLENE YURGAITIS: I saw you. How are you today?

BEN ALLEN, BYLINE 3: If you get her talking, Charlene Yurgaitis can be quick to smile. She shows me around her apartment in Lancaster, Pa.

YURGAITIS: Look at all my sneakers. And I keep them in boxes (laughter). I love sneakers and boots and flip-flops.

ALLEN: Yurgaitis, who is 35 years old, once supervised 17 people at an insurance company. Despite her lively personality, she says she never really felt accepted. And when some college students moved in next door about a decade ago, she started doing OxyContin before moving to heroin 4 and harder drugs. She went into recovery earlier this year.

YURGAITIS: I've been doing everything that I can possibly do to stop using. My normal thought is to just do it. Nobody will ever know.

ALLEN: But Yurgaitis gets a monthly Vivitrol shot.

YURGAITIS: That stops me.

ALLEN: The medication blocks receptors in her brain so she can't get high off opioids but also costs about a thousand dollars a dose. That's paired with weekly therapy sessions and visits with a recovery coach. Medicaid pays for all of it.

YURGAITIS: Without the government helping 5 me get where I'm at because, I mean, I would never be able to afford counseling. I would never be able to afford psych meds. I would never be able to afford the Vivitrol shot.

ALLEN: Yurgaitis is among the more than 124,000 Pennsylvanians who depended on Medicaid expansion to get help for their drug or alcohol addiction last year. The Republican health care bill that passed the House in May and is now under consideration by the Senate reduces spending for the program by more than $800 billion over 10 years.

Yurgaitis's representative in Lancaster County voted for the bill. And in the Senate, Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey agrees Medicaid should be cut. Under the Affordable 6 Care Act's Medicaid expansion, states pay no more than 10 percent for those new people. Toomey says states should have to pay a higher share.

PAT TOOMEY: So if it's not worth it to the state to buy this coverage 7 at 43 cents on the dollar, then how is it worth - those very same taxpayers 8 who at the end of the day have to provide the funding for the federal program, why is it worth it to them to pay 90 cents on the collar? It just doesn't make sense.

ALLEN: If Congress cuts federal dollars to Medicaid, that would leave states to fill in the gap, limit access to care or drop people off coverage. At a clinic in Harrisburg, Dr. Sarah Kawasaki says recovering from opiate addiction is so physically 9 difficult that people need access to medication to help. If they can't get it...

SARAH KAWASAKI: By necessity, they would probably have to go back to using heroin or any other medications they could find on the street to avoid getting sick. And I would worry about that.

ALLEN: Kawasaki he says flatly, if funding is reduced, more people would die from overdoses, and hepatitis C and HIV infections would rise because of dirty needles. In Lancaster, Charlene Yurgaitis gets worked up just thinking about the potential cuts.

YURGAITIS: Why are you trying to change something that's working? You know, that's what I don't understand. If I don't have those places to go to, I don't have anything else. And when I'm in my counseling session, that is my safe place.

ALLEN: Yurgaitis hopes she'll be able to get treatment for years to come so that at some point she can go back to work, perhaps helping other people recover from addiction. For NPR News, I'm Ben Allen in Harrisburg.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: This story is part of a reporting partnership 10 with NPR, WITF and Kaiser Health News.