Protect Ky. Medicaid; add more preventive care, drug treatment

I want to note first of all that health-care costs, while certainly still too high, finally appear to be stabilizing.

These costs rose over 60 percent between 2001 and 2007, then over 30 percent between 2007 and 2010, but have slowed significantly over the past few years since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and Kynect. The cost increase went all the way down to 5 percent last year.

We still have a lot of work to do, but I’m glad to see that we’re making progress, despite Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. Andy Barr’s efforts to return us to a broken status quo.

One of the major factors driving health-care costs is excessively high administrative overheads. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health-care administrators now outnumber actual physicians more than 10-to-1.

We can do a better job of using modern communications technology to streamline and reduce the need for so many administrators, which would have a significant impact on health-care costs. We can also streamline government reporting and insurance requirements to reduce workload demands on providers.

In the long run, we can also bring down costs by making better investments now in immunization. One of the reasons that immunization rates are currently insufficient is because physicians simply aren’t adequately paid for the service. To the extent that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, we can save a lot of money over time by making stronger investments now in immunization rates and other forms of preventative care.

I’m also in favor of ensuring universal health care for children. Not only is it the humane thing for the world’s most powerful economy to do, but it would dramatically improve our health conditions and health-care rates over a short period of time by preventing long-term chronic conditions that can develop in childhood (such as early Type II diabetes).

My opponent recently came out in support of Gov. Matt Bevin’s efforts to roll back the Medicaid expansion in Kentucky. This will deprive many thousands of Kentuckians of health care, many of whom will inevitably die without the support that my opponent wants to deny them. Real families and real lives are on the line, and I’m committed to doing everything I can to protect the most vulnerable among us from undeserved suffering.

It’s worth noting that the Medicaid rollback will also severely defund vital substance-abuse programs. A growing drug epidemic is probably the greatest public-health crisis our district is facing, and the budget cuts that my opponent supports would tear families apart by cutting the safety nets that work hard to guide addicts away from drug abuse into healthy and productive lives.

We need to handle substance-abuse victims the same way that wealthy families deal with their own members who fall prey to drug abuse: by treating them with compassion, treatment and rehabilitation rather than with punishment and condemnation. Efforts like drug task forces make for great headlines, but they’re frankly meaningless and purely for show if accompanied by budget cuts for substance-abuse programs.

This story was originally published October 24, 2016 at 12:53 PM with the headline "Protect Ky. Medicaid; add more preventive care, drug treatment."