Repealing Affordable Care Act Would Hurt Efforts to Combat Opioid Crisis: Botticelli

Repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would roll back any progress made against combating the nation’s opioid crisis, according to Michael Botticelli, Director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) under President Obama.

While he headed ONDCP, Botticelli argued that the opioid epidemic should be dealt with through treatment, not arrests, The Huffington Post reports.

“I think there is a tremendous amount of fear that we are going to retreat from all of the science and evidence that we know to be true about addiction,” Botticelli told The Huffington Post shortly before his last day at ONDCP.

“Our response to this opioid epidemic has largely been focusing on ‘How do we narrow that treatment gap?’” he said. “And certainly one of the biggest contributors to narrowing that treatment gap is making sure that people get insurance coverage and have adequate insurance coverage for substance use disorders… We know that care and coverage has been essential to dealing with the epidemic.”