Princess Health and Obama joins Rogers at National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, says it's time to focus on treatment over incarceration. Princessiccia

Princess Health and Obama joins Rogers at National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit, says it's time to focus on treatment over incarceration. Princessiccia

conferences drug abuse drug treatment heroin pain pain management prescription drug abuse prescription drugs president public health

Gusty 19:41 Add Comment

By Melissa Patrick
Kentucky Health News

The fifth annual national summit on prescription drug abuse, started by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, was the largest, broadest and highest-profile yet.

A non-prescription drug was added to the title of the four-day event, making it the National Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit. It drew more than 1,900 to Atlanta, including President Barack Obama, who joined an hour-long panel to talk about new ways to deal with a growing opioid and heroin epidemic.

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers

"The rapid growth of this summit is truly a testament to the power of unity. Everyone here has one common goal - to save lives from the dark clenches of drug abuse," Rogers, a Republican from Somerset, said in a news release.

The summit was hosted by Operation UNITE, a Kentucky non-profit created by Rogers that leads education, treatment and law enforcement initiatives in 32 counties in Southern and Eastern Kentucky. The acronym stands for Unlawful Narcotics Investigations, Treatment and Education.

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the U.S. someone dies every 20 minutes from an opioid overdose and Kentucky has one of the nation's highest rates, with more than 1,000 deaths a year from it.

(On Monday, April 4, KET's "Kentucky Tonight" will have a report on the summit and a look back at the network's coverage of drug addiction issues. For a preview from host Bill Goodman, click here.)

The University of Kentucky and UK HealthCare, which helped sponsor the summit, sent a delegation of executive, clinical and research leaders, including President Eli Capilouto as one of the keynote presenters, according to a UK news release.

�Too many Kentucky families are too often confronted by the dark and painful scourge of prescription drug abuse and opioid addiction," Capilouto said. "It�s an epidemic that penetrates communities across the nation, both urban and rural, but has especially intractable roots in Appalachia and the regions served by the University of Kentucky.�

Obama opened his remarks on the panel by thanking Rogers,who is also co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on Prescription Drug Abuse, and UNITE, "the organization that has been carrying the laboring oar on this issue for many years now. We are very grateful to them."

Obama focused some of his comments on broadening access to medication-assisted treatments for addiction, most successfully with counseling and behavior therapy.

"What we do know is that there are steps that can be taken that will help people battle through addiction and get onto the other side, and right now that's under-resourced," the president said.

Obama's administration recently proposed doubling the number of patients a health-care provider can treat with buprenorphine, one of the drugs used to fight addiction, to 200 from 100.

He said the opioid and heroin epidemic is a public-health issue and not just a criminal-justice problem, which is the only way to reduce demand. "In this global economy of ours that the most important thing we can do is to reduce demand for drugs," he said.

Because the opioid and heroin epidemic is touching everybody and not just poor people and minorities, there is now more emphasis on treatment over incarceration, Obama said: "This is not something that's just restricted to a small set of communities. This is affecting everybody -- young, old, men, women, children, rural, urban, suburban."

The president also noted that there has been a significantly increase in opioid abuse in rural areas, which often suffer from an under-resourcing of treatment facilities and mental health services.

"And that's why, for all the good work that Congress is doing, it's not enough just to provide the architecture and the structure for more treatment. There has to be actual funding for the treatment," he said.

The president has proposed $1.1 billion in his upcoming fiscal year 2017 budget request to fund drug-treatment programs in counties all across the country.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced two rural initiatives at the summit: town hall meetings in rural areas hit hardest by drug abuse, including Appalachia, "to raise awareness of the issue and discuss possible solutions," and an extension of the Rural Health and Safety Education competitive grant program to include $1.4 million in grants that will now be available to rural communities to fight heroin and painkiller abuse, according to a press release.

The president also announced several other new initiatives: establishing a Mental Health and Substance Disorder Parity Task Force; implementing mental health and substance use disorder parity in Medicaid; releasing $11 million for the purchase and distribution of the opioid-overdose reversal drug, naloxone; expanding an initiative that improves local partnerships between law enforcement and public health; a $7 million investment for community policing to address heroin; and providing guidelines for the use of federal funds to implement or expand needle-exchange programs.

Princess Health andWashington Post columnist looks at data, talks to experts and concludes Obamacare is working, at less cost than expected.Princessiccia

Princess Health andWashington Post columnist looks at data, talks to experts and concludes Obamacare is working, at less cost than expected.Princessiccia

health care costs health insurance health reform obamacare politics president

Gusty 15:47 Add Comment

The federal health-reform law "has accomplished its goal of expanding coverage � at a significantly lower cost than expected," columnist Ruth Marcus writes for The Washington Post "after talking to numerous health-care experts and examining the data."

Marcus writes up front, "There is a legitimate ideological debate about whether it is a wise use of federal power to require individuals to obtain health insurance or a wise use of federal resources to spend so much on subsidizing coverage. What�s more puzzling, and more disturbing, is the still-raging division over the real-world effect of the ACA."

She says President Obama "over-promised when he told people that, if they liked their health insurance, they could keep it; by its own terms, the law set new standards for required coverage. Certainly, some individuals, particularly younger and healthier customers, find themselves paying more; again, such winners and losers were an inevitable consequence of the individual mandate and minimum-coverage rules. Meantime, the scariest warnings � of employers rushing to drop coverage and insurance markets ensnared in death spirals of ever-rising premiums � have not come to pass.
Where the law has yet to fully deliver on its promises � and some wonder whether it will � is in the area of cost containment and quality improvement."

Marcus backs up her assessment with facts. For example, "Health-care costs and premiums for employer-sponsored insurance (the way most of us obtain coverage) have been rising at their lowest levels in years. On the exchanges, premium increases during the law�s second year mirrored that modest growth � averaging 2 percent on some mid-range plans and 4 percent on the lowest-cost ones, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation."

Princess Health andObama says health-reform law working better than expected.Princessiccia

Princess Health andObama says health-reform law working better than expected.Princessiccia

health insurance health reform obamacare president

Gusty 21:01 Add Comment

President Obama made this statement on the fifth anniversary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act:

On the five-year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, one thing couldn�t be clearer:  This law is working, and in many ways, it�s working even better than anticipated.

After five years of the Affordable Care Act, more than 16 million uninsured Americans have gained the security of health insurance � an achievement that has cut the ranks of the uninsured by nearly one third.  These aren�t just numbers.  Because of this law, there are parents who can finally afford to take their kids to the doctor.  There are families who no longer risk losing their home or savings just because someone gets sick.  There are young people free to pursue their dreams and start their own business without worrying about losing access to healthcare.  There are Americans who, without this law, would not be alive today.

For Americans who already had insurance before this law was passed, the Affordable Care Act has meant new savings and new protections.  Today, tens of millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions are no longer at risk of being denied coverage.  Women no longer have to worry about being charged more just for being women.  Millions of young people have been able to stay on their parents� plan until they turn 26.  More than 9 million seniors and people with disabilities have saved an average of $1,600 per person on their prescription medicine, over $15 billion in all since the Affordable Care Act became law.  More than 70 million Americans have gained access to preventive care, including contraceptive services, with no additional out-of-pocket costs.  And the law has helped improve the quality of health care: it�s a major reason we saw 50,000 fewer preventable patient deaths in hospitals over the last three years of data. 

The cynics said this law would kill jobs and cripple our economy.  Despite the fact that our businesses have created nearly 12 million new jobs since this law was passed, some still insist it�s a threat.  But a growing body of evidence � actual facts � shows that the Affordable Care Act is good for our economy.  In stark contrast to predictions that this law would cause premiums to skyrocket, last year the growth in health care premium costs for businesses matched its lowest level on record.  If premiums had kept growing over the last four years at the rate they had in the last decade, the average family premium would be $1,800 higher than it is today.  That�s $1,800 that stays in your pocket or doesn�t come out of your paycheck.  And in part because health care prices have grown at their slowest rate in nearly 50 years since this law was passed, we�ve been able to cut our deficits by two-thirds.  Health care costs that have long been the biggest factor driving our projected long-term up deficits up are now the single biggest factor driving those deficits down. 

The Affordable Care Act has been the subject of more scrutiny, more rumor, more attempts to dismantle and undermine it than just about any law in recent history.  But five years later, it is succeeding � in fact, it�s working better than even many of its supporters expected.  It�s time to embrace reality.  Instead of trying yet again to repeal the Affordable Care Act and allowing special interests to write their own rules, we should work together to keep improving our healthcare system for everybody.  Instead of kicking millions off their insurance and doubling the number of uninsured Americans, as the House Republican budget would do, we should work together to make sure every American has a chance to get covered.

Five years ago, we declared that in America, quality, affordable health care is not a privilege, it is a right.  And I�ll never stop working to protect that right for those who already have it, and extend it to those who don�t, so that all of us can experience the blessings of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in this country we love.  

Princess Health and Princess Health andIn selling proposed limits on CO2, Obama administration emphasizes health improvement, not climate-change fight.Princessiccia

Princess Health and Princess Health andIn selling proposed limits on CO2, Obama administration emphasizes health improvement, not climate-change fight.Princessiccia

air pollution asthma children's health climate change environmental health global warming president

Gusty 10:58 Add Comment

By Melissa Landon and Al Cross
Kentucky Health News

As it announced its plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent by 2030, the Obama administration emphasized the health angle, not climate change, which has been the driving force for the proposed regulations but is a more controversial cause than improving health.

"For the sake of our families' health and our kids' future, we have a moral obligation to act on climate," EPA administrator Gina McCarthy said in her announcement.

Juliet Eilperin and Steven Mufson note in The Washington Post that when a climate bill stalled in the Senate four years ago, environmental and public health activists began pressuring Preisdent Obama to mandate carbon limits. Opponents to the measure include coal producers, some utilities and many Republicans, who say that the EPA has not proposed a plan that can work using current technology.

Under the new rules, states would use different strategies�such as energy efficiency, shifting from coal to natural gas, investing in renewable energy and making power plant upgrades�to achieve state-by-state goals. The reductions will be measured from 2005 levels; Environmental Protection Agency data reveal that power plants in the U.S. have already diminished carbon dioxide emissions by almost 13 percent since 2005, The Associated Press reports.

EPA estimates the rules will prevent as many as 6,600 premature deaths, 150,000 asthma attacks in children, up to 490,000 missed work and school days�saving $93 billion, Connie Hedegaard writes for EurActiv. The federal Centers for Disease Control reports that "exposure to particle pollution may cause worsening asthma symptoms, breathing problems, adverse birth outcomes, lung cancer and early death," Healio reports.

The new rules are intended to assist Washington in achieving international obligations to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions deemed responsible for global warming, but Obama is focusing on the human health benefits to encourage Americans to adopt the movement, Jeff Mason wres for Reuters.

Although federal law has been employed to regulate other pollutants�such as soot, mercury and lead�this is the first time it has been applied to greenhouse gases, Fox News reports, quoting Obama: "We limit the amount of toxic chemicals like mercury, sulfur and arsenic that power plants put in our air and water. But they can dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air. It's not smart, it's not safe, and it doesn't make sense."