Mental health groups are warning the GOP healthcare bill, in it restructure of Medicaid, will wreak havoc on mental healthcare and efforts to fight the opioid crisis, NBC News reported.
"Medicaid is the single largest payer of mental health and addiction treatment services in the country, paying 25 percent of all mental health and 20 percent of all addiction care," the National Council for Behavioral Health said in a statement, NBC News reported.
"The American Health Care Act . . . as written would devastate Americans' mental health and addiction coverage and care," according to the council's president and CEO, Linda Rosenberg.
The council is joining groups including the National Alliance on Mental Illness and the American Psychological Association to fight against the GOP plan, NBC News reported.
"Put simply, if this bill passes, 14 million people who rely on Medicaid will not get the care they need, including millions for whom Medicaid provides treatment for substance use disorders or mental illnesses," Rosenberg told NBC News. "Many will instead end up homeless, in jail or dead."
According to Rosenberg, 29 percent of the people who got Medicaid through the Obamacare expansion have a mental illness or addiction.
In addition, some states hard-hit by the opioid crisis have turned to "medication assisted treatment" – a type of therapy that uses drugs such as buprenorphine to help wean people off the addictive painkiller – for which Medicaid covers between 35 percent and 50 percent of the costs, NBC News reported.
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