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Mental health and substance use disorders, including addiction to opioids, are the leading cause of disease burden in the United States, and the U.S. has the highest mortality rate for these disorders among similarly wealthy countries. This slideshow explores the prevalence, outcomes, access to care, and costs of mental health disorders and substance abuse in the United States.
As the largest payer of substance use disorder services in the United States, Medicaid plays a central role in state efforts to address the opioid epidemic. In addition to increasing access to addiction treatment services through the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), states are expanding Medicaid addiction treatment services, increasing provider reimbursements, restricting opioid prescribing, and implementing delivery system reforms to improve the quality of treatment services. While many states have been tracking progress and challenges in these efforts, uniqueness of state systems can make it difficult to compare or benchmark across states. This brief draws on analyses provided by the Medicaid Outcomes Distributed Research Network (MODRN), a collaborative effort to analyze data across multiple states to facilitate learning among Medicaid agencies. It profiles the opioid epidemic among the Medicaid population in six states participating in MODRN that also have been hard hit by the opioid epidemic: Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The brief also draws on interviews with officials from the state Medicaid and other health agencies.
Where does President-elect Donald Trump stand on key health care issues? This snapshot outlines his positions and policy statements during the campaign on issues such as health insurance, the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, the opioid epidemic, prescription drug costs, and women's reproductive health.
This partnership poll from The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation examines the long-term use of prescription painkillers by exploring the views and experiences of adults 18 and over who they themselves, or a household member, have taken strong prescription painkillers for a period of two months or more at some time in the past two years, other than to treat pain from cancer or terminal illness. The survey takes a closer look at long-term users of prescription painkillers to better understand how they started taking these drugs, their interactions with medical providers, their concerns and experiences with addiction, and their views of efforts to stem the abuse of painkillers.
As the nation struggles with an ongoing epidemic of prescription painkiller abuse, misuse, and overdoses, a new Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation survey finds that one in three (34%) of those who recently used such drugs for at least two months report being addicted or dependent.
Where do the 2016 Presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, stand on key health care issues? This snapshot outlines the candidates' positions and policy statements on issues such as health insurance, the ACA, Medicaid, Medicare, the opioid epidemic, prescription drug costs, women's reproductive health, and Zika.
This brief presents the results of the 2018 health center survey questions focused on activities releated to addressing the opioid epidemic. It includes information on opioid use disorder among health center patients, on-site provision of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and naloxone, provider training on providing MAT, treatment capacity issues, and safe prescribing practices. It also compares activities in Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states and discusses the critical role Medicaid plays in health centers’ ability to address the epidemic.
A majority of community health centers have seen a rising number of patients with opioid addiction over the last three years, according to a new issue brief released by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Health Care for the Homeless (HCH) programs, a subset of community health centers, play a significant role in addressing the opioid epidemic by providing medication-assisted treatment (MAT). MAT, which combines one of three medications (methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone) with behavioral therapies, is the standard of care for opioid use disorder (OUD). This brief presents findings from an analysis of health center data on the provision of buprenorphine-based MAT, as well as interviews with providers and administrators from 12 HCH programs about strategies they adopted to implement MAT programs.
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