Healthcare providers are to receive $94 million to fight the war on drug addiction, the Obama Administration has announced. The money is to be used to combat the increasing problem of opioid and heroin addiction in the country. According to CBS Philidelphia, the funding aims to help local healthcare providers by increasing the amount of doctors who can prescribe addiction treatment medicines to drug addicts who need it.
The Regional Director of the Department of Health and Human services (HHS) Joann Grossi, says that the funding will be used to employ more trained providers and “increase the number of patients who get screened for substance abuse disorders”.
Each health center that’s receiving the money will be able to hire one full time equivalent, substance abuse provider. Part of the money is specifically to hire trained providers, in addition to actually increasing the number of patients who get screened for substance abuse disorders, and connect them to treatment.
In other related news, the government has announced that enrollment numbers under President Barack Obama’s healthcare law has fallen short of a target set by the administration. According to a report issued by the HHS, 8.8 million people had signed up and paid for premiums however the target was set at 9.1 million. At the start of 2015, 11.7 million people had signed up meaning a 25 percent loss.
The cause of this is thought to be down to paperwork issues and problems with verifying U.S. citizenship, legal immigration and income. Many people decide to drop their coverage due to the problems encountered with income discrepancies.
The administration is hoping to combat the issues with paperwork and aims to still have 10 million enrollments by the end of the year, as reported in The Washington Times.
